NEW YORK, Oct. 02, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Outbrain (NASDAQ: OB), a leading technology platform that drives business results across the open internet, today announced the beta launch of Moments by Outbrain – a new way for users to interact with content, delivering the immersive experience of full screen vertical video browsing to the open internet. Moments enables traditional publishers and media owners to reimagine their online experience by transforming real estate on static articles into engaging vertical video feeds, bringing easy swipeable navigation to trusted, professional environments.
Audiences are spending an increasing amount of their time within walled gardens and social platforms. Moments marks the development of a true solution to bring similar algorithm-powered, visual exploration to the open internet. The new product offering brings the viral video and social media experience directly to quality publishers like Fortune and Axel Springer. With Moments, audiences have a new way to watch, read, and explore the vast amount of professionally-produced editorial content on the open internet in an environment not yet seen beyond walled gardens. In addition, Moments provides advertisers with a rich new canvas to extend the power of social formats to drive outcomes on the open internet, while offering publishers an entirely new channel to grow and engage their reader base.
“Moments is a truly exciting innovation that will enable advertisers and publishers to reimagine the way they interact with audiences on the open internet. Moments is more than just a video experience—it’s a bridge between the trusted content consumers love, and the brands they trust, creating a dynamic, immersive journey that turns casual viewers into loyal audiences,” said David Kostman, CEO of Outbrain.
Moments Early Adopters Show Strong Signals of Deepened User Engagement
- A recent 2024 study by MediaScience found that vertical video ads delivered in the Moments environment were rated similarly to social formats in terms of being high-quality, engaging, seamless, and entertaining. In addition, they outperformed digital ads.
- Tests also showed that users consume an average of 3.2 videos per session, with 40 percent of users watching between three and ten videos.
“We are delighted to have such an innovative partner in Outbrain to test new immersive content formats for moving images for our news brands such as BILD. With Moments, we offer our users a digital experience that significantly improves the presentation of our mobile content and meets the expectations of modern users for interactive content,” says Robert Blanck, General Manager for Advertising & E-Commerce at Axel Springer. “It promotes user interaction in a ‘natural’ way and helps us to better monetize our content. We look forward to working with Outbrain to further develop this promising solution.”
Research Finds Moments Outperforms Digital and Enhances the Effectiveness of Social Formats
For advertisers, Moments provides a solution to diversify their media mix beyond walled gardens. According to the MediaScience panel study, Moments users engage positively with the experience and its ads have the ability to drive enhanced ad viewing time, advertiser brand memory, and ad message recall versus digital ads. Specifically:
- Users spent an average of 14.6 seconds on Moments experiences, in contrast to 3.4 seconds on high-impact display experiences in similar environments.
- Moments drove significant lifts in memory of advertised brands compared to digital ads, producing 56% higher brand recall than digital ads, and 47% higher brand recognition than digital ads.
- The experience amplifies the effectiveness and impact of digital and social strategies, and leads to significant improvements in brand recall and brand recognition when coupled with TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts ads. The research shows that:
- Audiences who viewed both Moments formats and Social formats experienced an 87% lift in unaided brand recall.
- Vertical video ads delivered in Moments environments drive greater message recall and purchase intent when combined with digital ads — creating even better effects than social and digital strategies combined.
- Vertical video ads delivered on Moments environments, when combined with digital ads, drove 126% higher message recall than social ads alone and 167% higher message recall than digital ads alone.
- When compared to digital and social formats in news environments, ads delivered on Moments environments were rated as more informational and relevant than digital and social formats.
New Opportunities for Advertisers
For advertisers, Moments should open new opportunities to drive revenue growth. While vertical video budgets have traditionally focused on social networks, Moments by Outbrain will make vertical video campaigns available across its existing publisher platform and feed infrastructure. This will allow advertisers to leverage Outbrain’s extensive reach to place their vertical video formats on popular online media and engage their target audiences in innovative ways. The Moments environment keeps ad density low to ensure a positive, premium user experience.
Moments Offers Solutions for Publishers’ Challenges
Moments is expected to provide a compelling solution to spur new ad investment on the open internet, and helps publishers navigate the challenges of today’s digital media landscape by leveraging video content that mirrors the social media look and feel familiar to most users. The experience gives publishers the opportunity to more deeply engage and retain audiences.
Current Status and Future Outlook
Moments is currently in Beta and is being tested with selected partners in the USA, Germany, the UK, Italy, France, and Spain. A global launch is planned for 2025.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements generally relating to possible or assumed future results of our business, financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, plans and objectives. You can generally identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “guidance,” “outlook,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “foresee,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions or are not statements of historical fact. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our expectations and projections regarding future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors including, but not limited to: overall advertising demand and traffic generated by our media partners; factors that affect advertising demand and spending, such as the continuation or worsening of unfavorable economic or business conditions or downturns, instability or volatility in financial markets, and other events or factors outside of our control, such as U.S. and global recession concerns, geopolitical concerns, including the ongoing war between Ukraine-Russia and conditions in Israel, supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, labor market volatility, bank closures or disruptions, and the impact of challenging economic conditions, political and policy uncertainties with the approach of the U.S. presidential election, and other factors that have and may further impact advertisers’ ability to pay; our ability to continue to innovate, and adoption by our advertisers and media partners of our expanding solutions; the success of our sales and marketing investments, which may require significant investments and may involve long sales cycles; our ability to grow our business and manage growth effectively; our ability to compete effectively against current and future competitors; the loss or decline of one or more of our large media partners, and our ability to expand our advertiser and media partner relationships; conditions in Israel, including the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and other terrorist organizations, may limit our ability to market, support and innovate on our products due to the impact on our employees as well as our advertisers and their advertising markets, our ability to maintain our revenues or profitability despite quarterly fluctuations in our results, whether due to seasonality, large cyclical events, or other causes; the risk that our research and development efforts may not meet the demands of a rapidly evolving technology market; any failure of our recommendation engine to accurately predict attention or engagement, any deterioration in the quality of our recommendations or failure to present interesting content to users or other factors which may cause us to experience a decline in user engagement or loss of media partners; limits on our ability to collect, use and disclose data to deliver advertisements; our ability to extend our reach into evolving digital media platforms; our ability to maintain and scale our technology platform; our ability to meet demands on our infrastructure and resources due to future growth or otherwise; our failure or the failure of third parties to protect our sites, networks and systems against security breaches, or otherwise to protect the confidential information of us or our partners; outages or disruptions that impact us or our service providers, resulting from cyber incidents, or failures or loss of our infrastructure; significant fluctuations in currency exchange rates; political and regulatory risks in the various markets in which we operate; the challenges of compliance with differing and changing regulatory requirements; the timing and execution of any cost-saving measures and the impact on our business or strategy; our ability and the time required to consummate the transaction to acquire Tead (the “Transaction”); our ability to successfully integrate Teads’s operations, technologies and employees and to recognize the anticipated benefits and synergies of the Transaction, including the expectation of enhancements to our services, greater revenue or growth opportunities, operating efficiencies and cost savings; the potential impact of the announcement or pendency of the Transaction on ongoing business operations and relationships, including our ability to maintain relationships with employees, customers, suppliers and others with whom we do business; the amount of costs, fees, expenses and charges relating to the Transaction; the initiation or outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted following the announcement of the Transaction; and the risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed for the year ended December 31, 2023 and in subsequent reports filed with the SEC. Accordingly, you should not rely upon forward-looking statements as an indication of future performance. We cannot assure you that the results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or will occur, and actual results, events, or circumstances could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation and do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events or otherwise, except as required by law.
About Outbrain
Outbrain (Nasdaq: OB) is a leading technology platform that drives business results by engaging people across the open internet. Outbrain predicts moments of engagement to drive measurable outcomes for advertisers and publishers using AI and machine learning across more than 8,000 online properties globally. Founded in 2006, Outbrain is headquartered in New York with offices in Israel and across the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. To learn more, visit http://www.outbrain.com
Media Contact
press@outbrain.com
