Outbrain Ads Setup Guide for Brands and DTC Teams (2026)

Outbrain ads appear as recommendations in the feeds below and beside articles on large publisher sites, which makes Outbrain the natural second native channel for a brand that already runs Taboola, or a first one for a DTC team that wants prospecting outside social. This guide covers the setup end to end: Outbrain Amplify, the Outbrain Pixel and other Outbrain conversion tracking options, campaign goals, Conversion Bid Strategy, budgets, targeting, creatives, landing pages, measurement and scaling.

Every platform fact below comes from Outbrain's own help pages, opened on 22 October 2026. If you are new to native advertising in general, start with our Taboola ads setup guide, which explains how native feeds work; this article focuses on what is specific to Outbrain. If you run native for content arbitrage, our Taboola and Outbrain arbitrage case study is the better read.

Quick answer

To set up Outbrain ads for a brand: open an account in Amplify, install the Outbrain Pixel (plus a consent platform if you target the EU or UK) and create a conversion marked "include in total", choose the Sales or Leads goal, use Conversion Bid Strategy with a daily budget at least 3 times your target CPA, run one device type per campaign, launch with 5 to 10 ads, and send traffic to a landing page with contact details, a privacy policy and clear advertorial disclosure. Then judge results on profit, not clicks.

Outbrain, Teads and Amplify

Outbrain bought Teads in 2025 and the combined company took the Teads name. Outbrain's homepage now says that "Outbrain Direct Response is a subsidiary of the new Teads" and presents the offer as "Outbrain Direct Response (ODR) by Teads". Teads' own advertiser login is called Teads Ad Manager.

For an advertiser buying Outbrain's feed placements, the day-to-day tool is still Amplify. The Outbrain help centre describes it as the product that lets your content "appear as recommendations on the web's largest premium publisher sites", matched to readers through Outbrain's Interest Graph. Expect the naming to keep shifting: one Shopify help article is already titled "How To Create a Teads Conversion Pixel", while others still say Outbrain Pixel. In this guide, "Amplify" means the dashboard and "Outbrain" means the network.

Account setup

Outbrain's new campaign creation flow has six steps: select a campaign goal, define audience and targeting, upload ads, set budget and schedule, launch, and add payment details. It is quick, which is exactly why tracking should come first. A campaign that launches without a conversion can only be judged on clicks.

If Outbrain will sit next to Meta, Google, TikTok and Taboola, agree a naming convention and a reporting home before the first campaign. Our guide to managing ads across multiple platforms covers why that saves hours later.

Outbrain Pixel and conversions

To install the Outbrain Pixel, open the Conversions tab, click "Outbrain Pixel", copy the code and paste it into the head tag of your site. Outbrain has separate guides for Shopify and Google Tag Manager, plus WooCommerce, WordPress, Wix and HubSpot, and a browser extension to test it.

One requirement catches European brands out: if you target users in the EU or UK, you need an IAB-compliant consent management platform. In Outbrain's words, "without properly passing consent, you will not be able to track conversions using the Outbrain Pixel."

With the pixel live, create conversions. There are two types:

• URL-based, counted when someone reaches a page such as your order confirmation
• Event-based, counted when an action fires, useful when several events happen on one page

For each conversion you set a category, a window (the time a prospect usually takes to convert) and an optional fixed value; a dynamic value sent with the event replaces the fixed one. Outbrain recommends marking one conversion as "include in total", so it drives the CPA and ROAS columns. A pixel that records nothing for 72 hours shows "No Recent Activity".

Server-to-server and imported conversions

For conversions the browser cannot see, Outbrain offers two pixel-free routes (conversion tracking overview):

• Server-to-server (S2S). You create an event-based conversion, add OutbrainClickId={{ob_click_id}} to the campaign's tracking box, store the click ID with the user on your server and, at conversion, send a GET request to Outbrain's unified pixel endpoint with the click ID and event name. Optional fields include order value, currency and order ID (S2S setup guide). Event names are case-sensitive, and Outbrain cannot troubleshoot your own implementation.
• Imported conversions. For offline sales or CRM events, you send a CSV with the Outbrain click ID, conversion name and time. Only conversions within 72 hours of the click count towards optimisation, and Outbrain recommends sending daily (importing conversions). Duplicates with the pixel are removed.

As with Taboola, S2S and imports only report conversions that came from Outbrain, so totals will never match your store. That is normal; our article on cross-channel analytics approaches explains how to reconcile them.

Campaign goals

The current creation flow names four goals: Sales, Leads, App Install and Traffic. A DTC store will almost always choose Sales; subscription and high-ticket brands that sell after a sign-up may prefer Leads. Sales, Leads and App Install campaigns can take an optional Target CPA at setup, while Traffic campaigns run on a cost per click.

Outbrain bidding: Conversion Bid Strategy

Outbrain bidding for conversions runs through Conversion Bid Strategy (CBS), with four modes (which bid strategy fits):

Outbrain's CBS success checklist adds practical rules:

• Optimise towards a lower-funnel event, and also implement an earlier event with a conversion rate of roughly 10% to 20%. Do not optimise on a pixel converting at 40% or more.
• Set your first CPA goal around 20% above your ideal target, then tighten it once results come in.
• Benchmark against native and display, not search.
• Remove campaign-level blocks and, on Target CPA or Target ROAS, remove bid limits. Section-level CPC adjustments override CBS, so take them off too.

Budgets and pacing

Amplify offers three budget types: daily (the default, resetting at midnight Eastern time), monthly (renewing on the first of each month) and campaign (a fixed date range). Monthly and campaign budgets have a minimum daily equivalent.

Pacing differs by type. Daily budgets use accelerated pacing only, and spend can run up to 20% above the daily budget. Monthly and campaign budgets default to standard pacing, which spreads spend evenly, or you can set a daily target, which can be exceeded by up to 35%.

For conversion campaigns, Outbrain recommends a daily budget at least 3 times your desired CPA, starting smaller and increasing gradually. On Target ROAS, it suggests a budget that can deliver at least 8 conversions per week.

Targeting

The targeting options fall into a few groups:

• Placement: device, operating system and browser, plus a Wi-Fi-only option for mobile.
• Location: country, region, DMA or postal code, with bulk upload of up to 7,000 postal codes per campaign. The reach estimator ignores exclusions and postal codes.
• Audiences: segments built in the Audiences tab for retargeting site visitors, targeting past clickers or creating lookalikes. Outbrain suggests letting a segment reach at least 30,000 users first.
• Interests and attributes: Outbrain's Interest Graph, and third-party attribute data, which adds a data fee on top of CPC.
• Contextual: include or exclude IAB content categories.

Outbrain's campaign best practices say to keep each targeting tactic in its own campaign, because "layering on too many targeting tactics will limit the scale". Split by device too: group desktop and tablet, which have similar click-through rates, and run mobile separately. The creation flow itself now allows one device type per campaign.

Creatives and ad specs

Outbrain's ad specs for a standard native ad:

• Title: 60 characters recommended, 100 maximum
• Image: 1200 x 800 px, PNG or JPG, up to 2.5 MB
• Brand name: up to 60 characters
• Description: optional, up to 150 characters
• CTA button: optional, from a predefined list

Vertical, pre-roll and outstream video formats are also available. Outbrain suggests launching with 5 to 10 ads per campaign, and at least three title and image variations per URL. For conversion goals, add a CTA button. Amplify also offers an automated ad generation tool that builds title and image pairs from your site.

Landing pages and advertorial rules

Pre-landers such as listicles and founder stories are common on Outbrain, and the advertiser guidelines set firm limits:

• Disclosure. "Advertisement" or "Advertorial" must appear prominently at the top of the page, and the source name under the headline must show who sponsors it.
• Required elements. A privacy policy link and a real contact section; "an empty form to email the site owners is not enough". Pages promoted in Germany, Austria or Switzerland need an Impressum.
• No fake news format. Fake navigation, fake social icons and fake earned media logos are banned.
• Honest claims. No unproven health claims, no fake testimonials or comments, no countdown timers for offers that do not expire, and no before and after photos in thumbnails.
• AI disclosure. AI-generated ad content must be labelled at the point of first exposure.

Outbrain aims to review content within 1 business day, up to 3 for longer content, and only reviews campaigns that are live. Its reviewers also check that your headline matches the landing page and is not misleading.

Measurement

Measure Outbrain on the same definitions as your other channels:

1. Conversions in Amplify against store orders, to check the pixel or S2S counts correctly.
2. CPA by publisher and section, since quality varies more on native than on social.
3. Profit after product costs, shipping and fees, because ROAS hides margin. Our guide to why ROAS does not match profit covers the maths.

Each platform credits itself for shared customers, so Outbrain, Taboola and Meta conversions will add up to more than your orders. A single reporting layer helps you compare channels fairly.

Scaling Outbrain campaigns

Once a campaign holds its CPA for several days:

• Raise budgets gradually, as Outbrain recommends, and watch capping times.
• Lower CPCs by no more than 10% a day, or the campaign may drop off.
• Prune ads that miss KPIs after two to three days, then again after a week.
• Refresh creative by duplicating winners or adding 2 to 5 new ads, keeping no more than 10 live per campaign.
• Clone winners into new devices or audiences rather than widening one campaign.
• Tighten Target CPA step by step once volume is steady.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the consent platform in the EU or UK, so the pixel tracks nothing.
• Optimising on a soft event with a very high conversion rate.
• Keeping bid limits and section adjustments on Target CPA or Target ROAS campaigns.
• Stacking targeting tactics in one campaign.
• Mixing mobile and desktop, hiding very different CPCs in one average.
• Cutting CPC sharply in a single day.
• Pre-landers without disclosure or with news-style layouts.

Running Outbrain next to your other channels

Outbrain rarely runs alone, and each extra dashboard adds reporting work. Wevion connects Outbrain with an access token you paste, next to Meta, Google, TikTok, Taboola and Snapchat, in one multi-platform view synced about every 15 minutes. Outbrain's eCPM is mapped to CPM, so the cross-channel analytics columns line up.

From there you can:

• Compare spend and results across all six platforms by account.
• Set rules that pause or activate Outbrain campaigns on conditions you choose. Budget changes on Outbrain stay manual or go through the copilot.
• Track profit with Shopify or WooCommerce connected through profitability analytics, in beta.
• Work with Wavo, the AI copilot, which reads your accounts and proposes changes such as pausing a campaign or adjusting an Outbrain budget. Nothing changes until you approve it.

You can build Outbrain campaigns in Amplify or in the Wevion bulk launcher, which works one platform at a time, so Outbrain rows sit in their own grid next to your other channels. If you are weighing native dashboards against a layer on top, our comparison of native ads managers and third-party platforms sets out the trade-offs.

You can try Wevion with a 14-day free trial on the Pro plan, with no card needed.