Outbrain

This service does fake clicks and charges you twice as much as you agreed upon. There is no customer service nobody has replied to an email for over a month and they just respond with automatic emails.
I would stay very far away.

I have been in ecommerce for 10 years and used a host of advertising platforms. Never have i waited over a week with no response to open tickets. Their website says we will get back to you in 24 - 48 hours, complete crap. Dont waste your time and money.

I also strongly believe theyre sending fake clicks. We had x amount of visits from mobile, x amount from desktop and tablet and the majority from 'unknown'.

Spent around 800 usd - 1 conversion, no metrics on the value of conversion.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a customer or user of the services or web site of Outbrain or its associates.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Outbrain. It said
"Hi there!
Unfortunately, the credit card that we have on file for has declined, and weve had to temporarily disable your account...(so please) update your card info... email *******@outbrain.com to enable your account."

I am a professional network specialist with more than 30 years experience. The email checks out as genuinely from Outbrain.

I recommend you avoid the organisation at all cost.

I challenged the view figures with outbrain or two reasons
1) one the number of people they said didnt watch over 30 seconds on my views didn't match(in any way) normal conversions.

And 2) more critcally YouTube removing a large number of those views. I can't prove they were not genuine but YouTube are normally pretty good at spotting this kind of thing.

The customer service has been shocking and they took full payment in the middle of the dicussions before responding - I would avoid them.

Outbrain uses scam tactics

1) several boxes appear with different subjects. A "x" appears in the upper right corner. You press that thinking that it's a close ad button: WRONG! It takes you to that box's content. If you wait a few moments, the real close button appears, EXCEPT

2) the actual target area is smaller than in most ads, and if you're not extremely precise, you'll get taken to that box's content.

3) when closed successfully, you're not really closed, another group of boxes appear. The close button will eventually appear in the upper left corner, again with an extremely small target area, taking you to that box's content.

I understand how advertising works, however, anyone who does business with Outbrain is dealing with a deceptive company using deceptive practices which provides deceptive information to whomever they sell the information to. It also spams me with ads that aren't relevant to me due to their deceptive practices.

DON'T FALL FOR THIS!
This is not real and they charge for NOTHING, even not having an account with them anymore.
We tested the service with the native ads, which is the waste of time & money. Don't fall for this!
After cancelling the account, this company is charging from our Credit Card even without having an active account anymore! How is this possible?
This is nothing else than robbery and we are going to make official complaint about this issue!

The Support is not helpful and even we can not access to our account anymore.