Sydney, Australia – Recommendation platform Outbrain has announced the release of Keystone, a business optimisation platform aimed at aligning a publisher’s complete set of business initiatives with a more tailored experience for audiences.

Keystone applies Outbrain’s proprietary bidding and optimisation AI technologies to integrate every revenue-generating facet of a publisher’s site, including subscriptions, e-commerce, and any other business goal unique to each publisher.

While Outbrain’s current recommendation technology provided nearly US$745M in direct payments to Outbrain’s media partners in 2021 alone, Keystone is expected to help media owners increase their earnings by providing a more customised experience for readers across all properties and initiatives.

In addition, the technology utilised Outbrain’s AI conversion prediction-engine to create dynamic user segmentation, and the Keystone dashboard provides full transparency and a unified view of business initiatives to monitor and report on KPIs, inform strategies, and gather insights in real time.

Yaron Galai, co-founder and co-CEO of Outbrain, said, “Keystone is a technology that publishers can rely on to make the most of audiences’ digital experiences while preserving quality editorial content. The anticipated result is a tailored user experience supporting a more diversified revenue mix that positions our media partners for future growth.”

Keystone currently has four design partners including a large US news publisher and a leading European financial publisher.

Meanwhile, Andrew Burke, managing director for APAC and growth markets (India, China, Brazil) at Outbrain, commented, “With Keystone, publishers will be able to revolutionise the way they connect with their readers, providing a whole new level of engagement. This new tool has great potential, and we’re excited to offer it to audiences in our region.”

Lastly, Amit Elisha, general manager of Keystone and VP of products of Outbrain, said, “With publisher ad revenues under pressure, static experiences across all touchpoints are causing them to leave money on the table. “Providing a more tailored experience for readers by understanding their intent will create loyalty, ultimately driving repeat visits and increasing the value of a publisher’s business.”

Hong Kong – Hong Kong’s magazine publisher SCMP Magazines has integrated global digital adtech Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) Publisher Optimisation Solution, aimed at delivering quality impressions for its advertisers.

By activating the IAS Publisher Optimisation solution, SCMP Magazines aims to directly improve its ad inventory’s viewability and match its advertisers’ brand risk threshold by avoiding risky content. The partnership entails measurement and optimisation toward low IVT rates in real-time to ensuring its traffic is worth the investment and to reduce the redundancies of manual campaign optimisations.

Jennifer Tsang, SCMP Magazines’ VP of digital, shared that their goal has always been to uphold high standards of MRC viewability and brand safety for advertiser campaigns running on Cosmopolitan, Harper’s BAZAAR, ELLE, and Esquire Hong Kong websites. 

“IAS’ Publisher Optimisation Solutions allows us to do so effectively through intelligent ad inventory management and optimisation,” said Tsang.

Meanwhile, Laura Quigley, IAS’ SVP for APAC, said that their Publisher Optimisation solution seamlessly integrates publishers’ ad servers and powers inventory to automatically optimise ad delivery down to the placement level for direct and programmatic deals. 

“We’re very excited to partner with SCMP magazines to help advertisers ensure that they continue to invest in digital safely and efficiently,” added Quigley.