Outbrain Continues Its Pledge to Uphold Quality Content and User Trust

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Aug 15, 2013) - Outbrain, the leading content discovery platform, is continuing its pledge to uphold quality content and user trust through a variety of precautionary measures announced today. The first of these is a strategic partnership with BillGuard, the world's first transaction monitoring and resolution provider. Through access to BillGuard's platform, the partnership enables Outbrain to identify and remove unscrupulous merchants from their network, thereby eliminating the possibility of sending readers to shady merchant links that could result in erroneous and unwanted credit card charges.

The partnership represents one of many precautions Outbrain has put in place to further its mission of upholding quality content. Late last year, Outbrain ejected a number of questionable marketers from its network using BillGuard's Merchant Reliability Index and was one of the first companies to set forward strict content guidelines. To further this goal, Outbrain employs a team of people that individually review the content submitted to their system, in addition to having an anonymous editorial board that reviews all content and serves as an independent verifier of the company's content guidelines. The company revealed today that it rejects 50 percent of the content submitted by marketers.

"Helping readers find trustworthy content is at the very core of what we do and staying true to that mission means taking the necessary steps and precautions to rid our network of any content that harms the user experience," said Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai. "As more and more shady behavior sprouts up in the content marketing space, it becomes increasingly important for us to stay true to our values, even if it comes at the expense of short-term revenues. BillGuard provided us with a platform, unlike any other out there, to quickly identify marketers using shady tactics and prune them out of our index."

"There are natural synergies between our mission at BillGuard and Outbrain's commitment to protecting consumers and upholding their trust," said BillGuard CEO Yaron Samid. "We're proud to partner and facilitate Outbrain's gold-standard vetting of marketers in its network. Harnessing the collective knowledge of millions of consumers enables BillGuard to provide its partners a definitive metric of merchant reliability."

Outbrain's emphasis on quality content is evident in its industry-leading click-through-rates, which are orders of magnitude higher than most traditional forms of digital advertising. Audiences who discover content through Outbrain are also more engaged -- they consume 44% more page views per session than those coming from search and 46% more than social media.

About BillGuard
BillGuard is the Transaction Intelligence Network™ enabling trusted commerce via credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets, by harnessing the inputs of millions of consumers, merchants and financial service providers. This crowdsourced knowledge empowers consumers to intelligently monitor their spending and resolve unwanted "grey charges" directly with merchants via BillGuard's mobile app or their bank's online statements, saving everyone time and money. BillGuard has won numerous top industry awards and was named one of the top banking innovations of all time in 2012 by Online Banking Report. The company has offices in New York City and Tel Aviv and is backed by prominent investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. For more information, visit http://www.billguard.com

About Outbrain
Outbrain (www.outbrain.com), the leading content discovery platform, is on a mission to help readers find the most interesting content online, while giving publishers and brands the ability to reach a highly engaged audience. Using personalized links, Outbrain recommends content across a network of more than 700 premium publishers, including CNN, Fox News, Hearst, Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Fast Company. Links to content on a publisher's own site increase stickiness, while links to high-quality third-party content increase site traffic and generate revenue. Outbrain is currently installed on more than 100,000 sites and generates more than 100 billion recommendations per month. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in New York, with 13 offices globally, including the U.S., U.K., Israel, Singapore and Australia.