Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Outbrain VS Medium

Compare Outbrain VS Medium and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Outbrain logo Outbrain

Outbrain is the world's leading performance-driven discovery and native advertising platform. We help advertisers get discovered on leading publishers websites.

Medium logo Medium

Welcome to Medium, a place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you.
  • Outbrain Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20
  • Medium Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-08

Outbrain features and specs

  • Global Reach
    Outbrain has partnerships with a variety of major publications worldwide, allowing you to reach a broad and diverse audience.
  • Targeting Options
    Outbrain offers advanced targeting features including geo-targeting, interest targeting, and behavioral targeting, which helps in reaching the right audience.
  • Engagement Metrics
    Provides detailed metrics and insights into how users are interacting with your content, allowing for data-driven decisions.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform is user-friendly and offers a streamlined process for setting up and managing campaigns.
  • Content Amplification
    Helps in amplifying your content and driving high-quality traffic to your website or blog.

Possible disadvantages of Outbrain

  • Cost
    Outbrain can be expensive compared to other content recommendation platforms, especially for small businesses.
  • Content Approval
    The content approval process can be stringent and time-consuming, potentially delaying campaigns.
  • Mixed Quality Traffic
    Not all the traffic driven by Outbrain may be of high quality, potentially resulting in lower conversion rates.
  • Ad Fatigue
    Frequent displays of the same content recommendations can lead to ad fatigue among users, thereby reducing effectiveness over time.
  • Limited Control
    While the targeting options are robust, there is still limited control over where exactly your content will appear, which could impact brand safety.

Medium features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Medium offers an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple for anyone to start writing and publishing content without any technical knowledge.
  • Built-in Audience
    The platform has a large and active user base, so new content has the potential to reach a wide audience quickly.
  • Publishing Tools
    Medium provides versatile publishing tools that support text, images, and various media formats, which helps in creating rich and engaging content.
  • SEO Benefits
    Articles posted on Medium tend to rank well in search engine results, thanks to the platform's high domain authority.
  • Community and Interaction
    Medium encourages reader engagement through comments, claps, and highlights, fostering a sense of community among writers and readers.

Possible disadvantages of Medium

  • Monetization
    While Medium has a Partner Program, it may not be as lucrative as other methods of monetization available on independent blogging platforms.
  • Control and Customization
    Medium offers limited customization options compared to dedicated blog platforms like WordPress, restricting how you can brand and personalize your blog.
  • Content Ownership
    By publishing on Medium, you agree to their terms and conditions, which may include giving up some control over how your content is used and distributed.
  • Paywall Issues
    Some articles are placed behind a paywall, which might limit the reach of your content if you want it to be freely accessible to everyone.
  • Dependency on Platform
    Relying solely on Medium means that any changes to the platform's policies or algorithms can directly impact your reach and engagement.

Analysis of Outbrain

Overall verdict

  • Outbrain is generally considered good for businesses and marketers looking to increase content visibility and drive traffic. Its effectiveness, however, can depend on specific marketing goals, target audience, and content strategy. Some users appreciate its wide reach and engagement capabilities, while others may find the costs challenging without a clear ROI.

Why this product is good

  • Outbrain is a content discovery platform that helps publishers and marketers reach a larger audience by promoting their content across a network of high-quality sites. It is known for its advanced targeting options, which allow businesses to reach specific demographics, and its native advertising approach, which aims to better engage users compared to traditional ads.

Recommended for

  • Content Marketers
  • Digital Advertisers
  • Companies aiming to increase brand awareness
  • Publishers looking to monetize their websites

Analysis of Medium

Overall verdict

  • Medium can be considered a good platform for those who enjoy a wide array of content and appreciate quality writing on diverse subjects. However, the value of Medium depends on individual preferences and whether the topics and writing styles align with what the reader is looking for.

Why this product is good

  • Medium offers a diverse range of articles from both professional and amateur writers, providing readers with numerous perspectives on various topics. Its clean user interface and ease of use make it an appealing platform for both writers and readers. The platform also supports monetization for writers, allowing them to earn from their content.

Recommended for

    Medium is recommended for avid readers seeking a variety of topics ranging from personal development to technology. It's also ideal for writers looking to publish their work to a broad audience and potentially earn revenue through the platform's Partner Program.

Outbrain videos

OUTBRAIN Amplify PUBLISHER Review | Underground Targeted Traffic Source

More videos:

  • Review - Should You Be Using Outbrain or Taboola? | Ep. #233
  • Review - Outbrain Adsense Reviews: for Publisher | Earn High Revenue with Outrain For Blogger & Websites

Medium videos

Medium Review - with Tom Vasel

More videos:

  • Review - Starting a blog on Medium.com? Watch this FIRST.
  • Review - The Medium Review
  • Review - The Medium - Before You Buy
  • Review - I recommend: The Medium (Review)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Outbrain and Medium)
Advertising
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging
0 0%
100% 100
Ad Networks
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging Platform
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Outbrain and Medium

Outbrain Reviews

The 5 Best Content Marketing Tools You Aren't Using
4. Outbrain. Are you already creating great content but struggling to distribute it to the right networks? Outbrain is for you. The easy-to-use platform can amplify your audience for virtually any piece of content, including blogs, articles, videos, and infographics. Your content appears alongside other articles as promoted content suggestions. While this is a โ€œpay-to-playโ€...

Medium Reviews

19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Medium focuses on thoughtful content and community engagement. It offers a user-friendly interface, a large readership base, and various features for writers and readers.
Source: www.pixpa.com
25+ Medium Alternative Platforms for Publishing Articles
Medium is an online platform that was created in 2012 by Evan Williams. It is a place for people to share their thoughts and ideas on various topics. Medium has about 100 million monthly visitors, which makes it one of the most popular platforms for publishing articles.
Source: forgefusion.io
10 Best Medium Alternatives for Reading and Publishing
From thะต simplicity of Ghost to thะต vะตrsatility of Substack, thะตrะตโ€™s a homะต for ะตvะตryonะต seeking great Medium alternatives. Thะตsะต altะตrnativะตs offะตr a world of possibilitiะตs for rะตadะตrs and authors alikะต. Whะตthะตr youโ€™rะต in sะตarch of a uniquะต platform to sharะต your thoughts or want to read frะตsh contะตnt, thะตsะต platforms havะต somะตthing spะตcial to offะตr. All in all, we...
9 Best Medium Alternatives for Making Money With Your Writing in 2023
Substack and Medium differ primarily in their monetization methods. Medium pays creators based on reader engagement, while Substack enables writers to monetize directly through paid subscriptions to their newsletters. This business model allows Substack users to build a direct relationship with their readers via their email inboxes, whereas Medium interactions primarily...
How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform in 2021 (Compared)
Medium works much like a social networking site where you can create an account and start publishing your articles. After you sign up, youโ€™ll have a profile address like this: https://medium.com/@yourname. But you cannot use your own domain.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Medium seems to be a lot more popular than Outbrain. While we know about 3081 links to Medium, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Outbrain. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Outbrain mentions (3)

  • Newbie question on HTML
    Or it's related to the site's ad campaign. You see the first link is for outbrain.com which is an affiliate program. Those sites listed might be affiliates OR they are sites that Soulframe is refusing to give affiliate money to for links. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • I get 4.5 million page views a month on my content, how do I get advertising?
    Additionally, I have become aware of services such as outbrain.com and taboola.com that pay publishers in a variety of ways for integrating ads onto content that has high page views. However, I don't know the correct course as advertising is uncharted waters for me. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021)
    Outbrain | Israel, Half-Remote | Full-Time | Experienced Algorithm/ML Engineer | https://outbrain.com Our team is developing machine learning algorithmic solutions that improve outcomes for our advertisers. It is part of Outbrainโ€™s Recommendations Group - about 40 machine learners, data scientists and machine-learning engineers who are responsible for everything that Outbrain recommends in its feeds and widgets.... - Source: Hacker News / almost 5 years ago

Medium mentions (3081)

  • Microsoft Fire IdTech Team at Id Software
    Console vs PC is a red herring since UE games still stutter on consoles, people just notice that less because most games run at 30 fps anyway. You can read Unreal's own blog posts on this and they'll actually explain that this is mostly down to their material system (and game logic/scripts reaching into it) being designed to create nearly infinite shader variations on the fly in response to arbitrary world/game... - Source: Hacker News / about 20 hours ago
  • Why migrants come to Germany for work and then leave again
    I'm no expert on haplogroups either, but cursory googling seems to indicate they are far more numerous and nuanced than the late victorian, scientific-racism derived classifications used today - i.e.: black, white, asian etc. But we don't need to be specialists in population genetics to observe that human cultures interbreed. We can't reliably correlate visible biomarkers with genetic origin, especially in... - Source: Hacker News / 1 day ago
  • Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman After Surveilling Her with a LPR
    I think it's intresting to read about the guy who made yolo, take a look at his website and later, his thoughts about the monster he may have created. https://medium.com/@graham.wallington/the-evolution-of-yolo-joseph-redmons-departure-and-the-ethics-of-computer-vision-66d9b75f0eca https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/. - Source: Hacker News / 2 days ago
  • The Private Capture of Public Genius
    One hardly needs to soar to the exalted heights of "mysticism" or any sort of "ineffable qualities" to come into contact with the limitations of LLMs. 1) Models do not perform the functional equivalent of reasoning at all. When we reason, we don't simply babble out textual derivations of prior examples of "reasoning" to which we have been exposed, arrive at a conclusion, then occasionally state an altogether... - Source: Hacker News / 2 days ago
  • Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)
    Io_uring, concurrency, TCP, mmap, systems programming Rรฉsumรฉ/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dQrgGxvun68WMty-m7A-wsR7KF3gxKdU/view?usp=sharing Email: ashishrathour1102@gmail.com GitHub: https://github.com/AasheeshLikePanner Backend and infrastructure engineer focused on systems programming in Go. I build low-level infrastructure from scratch and benchmark it honestly. Recent projects: vase โ€” a pub/sub broker... - Source: Hacker News / 7 days ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Outbrain and Medium, you can also consider the following products

Taboola - Drive traffic to your site, blog or video, or monetize your site with the largest platform for content recommendation, audience acquisition, and native advertising.

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

Infolinks - Discover what Infolinks smart ads can do for you

DEV.to - Where software engineers connect, build their resumes, and grow.

VigLink - VigLink identifies commercial products mentioned within content and links them to destinations determined in real-time, advertiser-bid auctions.

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.