> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Total Spend, Outbrain > Total Spend for Outbrain stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ad Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Total Outbrain media spend across all campaigns in the selected period. The headline number paid acquisition leads check first when reviewing the native-content-recommendation channel. Outbrain is a *content discovery* network ("From Around the Web" widgets on news sites, blogs, and publisher pages), so spend behaves differently from search or social, the audience is colder and conversion lag is longer. | | | | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **What it counts** | `SUM(spend)` across every Outbrain campaign in the merchant's account, summed over the selected time window. Pulled from `GET /amplify/v0.1/marketers/{marketerId}/performance` with `breakdown=campaign` and aggregated client-side. | | **Cost basis** | **CPC by default** (Outbrain's primary bidding model for "Engage" campaigns), with **CPM available** for "Awareness" campaigns and **vCPM for video**. Spend is the post-auction realised cost, not the bid. | | **Currency** | Account currency, set at marketer-account creation in Outbrain (typically GBP for UK merchants, EUR for EU, USD for US). Spend is reported in account currency with no FX conversion; multi-currency advertisers run separate marketer accounts per currency. | | **Conversion attribution model** | Outbrain's default is **last-click within a 30-day window**. View-through conversions (impressions without click) are tracked separately as "view conversions" but **excluded** from the primary `conversions` metric this card complements. Cross-device conversions are included if the Outbrain pixel is implemented with logged-in user IDs. | | **Attribution window** | **30-day click + 1-day view** (Outbrain's default). Configurable per conversion event in **Conversions → Settings → Attribution Window**. The window matters for Outbrain more than most channels, native discovery has a multi-day lag from impression to purchase intent. | | **Bot / invalid traffic** | Outbrain applies its proprietary IVT filter (described in their *Ad Quality* documentation) before reporting; clicks and spend are pre-filtered. **Some IVT slips through**, particularly on long-tail publisher inventory; expect 3 to 7 percent drag on apparent ROAS from undetected non-human clicks (higher than search-platform IVT due to the publisher-network model). | | **Discovery vs intent channel** | Outbrain reaches users *browsing*, not *searching*. ROAS is structurally lower than Google Ads search; healthy DTC ROAS on Outbrain is typically 1× to 3× (versus 4×+ for branded search). Treat Outbrain spend in the *prospecting* bucket of your media plan. | | **Refresh cadence** | Hourly. Outbrain's reporting API has up to 4-hour ingestion lag for click and spend, conversions can take 24 to 72 hours to settle due to native-discovery's view-to-purchase latency. Same-day spend numbers are usually close-to-final by next-morning. | | **Time window** | `T/7D/30D vsP` (today / 7-day / 30-day, vs prior period). | | **Alert trigger** | `spike >2σ vs 30D baseline` (warns on unusual spend velocity, the typical signal that a new campaign launched without its budget cap working or a bid algorithm went rogue overnight). | | **Roles** | owner, marketing, finance | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Outbrain data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example A UK lifestyle brand on Shopify, AOV £68, running Outbrain alongside Meta Ads and Google Ads as their three-channel paid-media stack. Outbrain budget is £14k/month, positioned as cold-prospecting top-of-funnel. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 28 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days (27 Feb 26 to 28 Mar 26). | Campaign | Bid model | Spend | Clicks | Conversions | Revenue | Campaign ROAS | | ---------------------------------- | --------- | ----------- | ---------- | ----------- | ----------- | ------------- | | Engage, "Sustainable Home" article | CPC £0.42 | £4,820 | 11,476 | 184 | £11,560 | 2.40× | | Engage, "Gifting Guide" article | CPC £0.55 | £3,610 | 6,564 | 92 | £6,820 | 1.89× | | Conversions, "Best-of Range" page | CPC £0.71 | £4,180 | 5,887 | 144 | £14,210 | 3.40× | | Awareness, brand-discovery video | CPM £4.10 | £1,640 | 312 | 9 | £680 | 0.41× | | **Total (this card)** | mixed | **£14,250** | **24,239** | **429** | **£33,270** | **2.34×** | What this tells the merchant: 1. **Spend held to budget within 1.7 percent.** £14,250 vs £14k allotted means budget pacing is healthy. The alert at `spike >2σ vs 30D baseline` is well clear. 2. **The 2.34× blended ROAS is honest for Outbrain.** Outbrain is cold-prospecting; the audience is browsing, not searching. A 2.3× to 3× headline ROAS on Outbrain is healthy at a 60 percent gross margin. **Do not benchmark against Google search ROAS** (which on this brand sits around 5×); the comparison is meaningless because the audiences are at different funnel stages. 3. **The Conversions campaign at 3.40× is the leverage point.** It gets the highest CPC (£0.71) but converts at a meaningfully better rate, the bid algorithm is buying intent, not just clicks. Pair with [ROAS by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/roas-by-campaign) to see which campaigns to scale and which to cut. Action: shift £1k/month from the Awareness campaign into the Conversions campaign and re-measure in 14 days. 4. **The Awareness campaign at 0.41× is the question mark.** Awareness is supposed to seed brand-discovery for future direct/branded conversions, *not* drive last-click revenue. The 0.41× direct ROAS is meaningless without an attributed lift study. Either (a) accept the campaign as a brand-investment and exclude from ROAS reporting, (b) commit to running an Outbrain-native lift study to quantify halo effect, or (c) cut. Most DTC brands cut. 5. **The 30-day prior window had spend of £13,820, ROAS 2.51×.** Spend up 3 percent, ROAS down 7 percent, marginal degradation. Likely explanation: the bid algorithm scaled into less-efficient inventory as budget grew. Healthy response: hold budget flat for 14 days and let the algorithm re-converge. **The "spend up + ROAS down" shape is the warning pattern**; if it continues for two consecutive periods, cut budget back. **The "spend suddenly spiked" debug case.** If today's spend reads £580 against a 30-day daily average of £475 (i.e. \~+22 percent vs baseline), check three things in this order: (1) [Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-by-campaign) to see which campaign is overspending; (2) the bid for that campaign in Outbrain's UI, the algorithm may have raised the bid to win available inventory; (3) the daily-budget-cap setting, a missing cap is the most common cause of sudden over-spend. Outbrain's spend can spike intra-day because publisher inventory pricing is dynamic. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Total Spend | What the combination tells you | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/total-revenue) | The other half of the ROAS equation. | Spend up + revenue up equals healthy scaling; spend up + revenue flat equals scaling beyond efficient frontier. | | [ROAS](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/roas) | The blended efficiency single-number. | Spend up + ROAS down is the most common warning shape; investigate before cutting. | | [Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-by-campaign) | Per-campaign breakdown. | Headline spend is fine but a single campaign over-spending is hidden, this is where it surfaces. | | [Spend vs Budget](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-vs-budget) | Budget-pacing view. | Spend on track but pacing flagged equals you're spending normally but ahead of monthly cap. | | [Spend Anomaly](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-anomaly) | The 24-hour spike detector. | Anomaly fires before the 30D `spike >2σ` alert; treat it as the early-warning. | | [Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/wasted-spend) | Spend on zero-conversion content / placements. | Total spend high + wasted spend high equals headline OK but quality poor; trim aggressively. | | [CPC Trend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/cpc-trend) | Per-click cost trend. | CPC rising while spend is flat means click volume is dropping; an inventory or bid issue. | | Cross-connector: [Google Ads Total Spend](/nerve-centre/google_ads/gads_spend) | Adjacent paid channel. | Compare share-of-voice and budget allocation across channels. | | Cross-connector: [Meta Ads Spend](/nerve-centre/facebook/fb_spend) | Social-side paid channel. | Outbrain is structurally cold-prospecting; compare ROAS bands carefully, do not aggregate. | | Cross-connector: [Shopify Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/total-revenue), [BigCommerce Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/total-revenue) | Truth-side revenue benchmark. | Outbrain's `revenue` is pixel-attributed; the commerce-platform total is the source of truth. The two should track in direction, not in absolute. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Outbrain's own dashboard:** > [Outbrain Amplify Dashboard](https://my.outbrain.com/amplify/site/reports) → **Reports → Performance**, set the date range to match the card's window, and the *Spend* column header is the like-for-like figure. For a finer-grained view, **Reports → Campaign Performance** breaks spend down by campaign; this is the matching view for [Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-by-campaign) reconciliation. The headline figures should agree to within 1 to 2 percent. **Why our number may legitimately differ from Outbrain's report:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | ------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Time zone** | Boundary days off | Outbrain's UI uses the marketer-account's configured timezone (set in **Settings → Account → Timezone**). The card uses UTC. For a 30-day window the gap averages out; for "today" it can shift the number meaningfully. | | **Reporting ingestion lag** | Ours lower for "today" | Outbrain's API ingests click and spend data on a 1-to-4-hour lag, particularly during peak publisher-traffic hours. The card refreshes hourly; same-day numbers are typically 90 to 95 percent settled by close-of-business and fully settled by next morning. | | **Conversion attribution lag** | Ours lower for "today" revenue, not spend | Spend is fast (clicks ingest within the hour); conversions ingest with up to 72-hour lag because Outbrain's view-to-purchase window is longer than search-platform attribution. The spend figure on this card is generally accurate; the *ROAS* derived from it is unstable for the most recent 24 to 72 hours. | | **Currency conversion** | Either if multi-currency advertiser | Outbrain accounts are single-currency. If a merchant runs separate marketer accounts per region (e.g. GBP for UK, EUR for EU, USD for US), Vortex IQ converts to a single display currency using the daily ECB FX rate. Outbrain's per-account UI shows native currency. | | **IVT post-filter adjustments** | Either, marginal | Outbrain occasionally re-classifies historical clicks as IVT after detection of a publisher-side fraud pattern; spend can adjust downward by 1 to 3 percent up to 14 days after the original click. The card uses the most-recent-known figure. | | **Pacing buffer** | Marginal | Outbrain's bid algorithm uses a 5 to 10 percent over-pacing buffer at the start of a daily window and corrects intra-day. The card sees the realised spend; the buffer is invisible to the API. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [`google_ads.gads_spend`](/nerve-centre/google_ads/gads_spend) | No mathematical identity, parallel paid channel. | Different bid models, different audiences, different attribution. Compare share-of-budget, not absolute spend. | | [`facebook.fb_spend`](/nerve-centre/facebook/fb_spend) | No mathematical identity, parallel paid channel. | Same as above. | | [`google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-analytics/revenue-by-channel) | GA4 attributes Outbrain-driven revenue to the `cpc` / `display` / `referral` channel depending on tagging. | UTM-tagging discipline determines visibility. Untagged Outbrain traffic appears as Direct or Referral, not Outbrain-attributed; this is the most common reconciliation gap. | | [`shopify.total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/total-revenue), [`bigcommerce.total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/total-revenue), [`adobe_commerce.total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/total-revenue) | Outbrain spend should drive a fraction of commerce-platform revenue; ratio gives the channel's contribution. | Multi-touch attribution windows differ; Outbrain claims 30-day click while the commerce platform sees only the last-touch order. Expect Outbrain's claimed revenue to overstate the *incremental* revenue by 20 to 50 percent. | ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **Why is Outbrain ROAS so much lower than Google Ads ROAS?** Different funnel stages. Google Search captures *intent* (someone typed your category or brand into a search box, they're already in-market). Outbrain reaches users *browsing* (someone reading an article on a publisher site sees your ad as a "From the web" recommendation). The browsing audience converts at a structurally lower rate; healthy Outbrain ROAS is 1× to 3× versus 4×+ on branded search. Don't average the two; treat them as separate channels at different funnel stages. **My Outbrain spend looks fine but the conversions look low. Should I cut?** First, check the attribution lag. Outbrain conversions take 24 to 72 hours to settle (the audience is browsing, not buying-now), so today's spend pairs with conversions that arrive over the following 3 days. The standard rule: don't judge an Outbrain campaign on less than a 7-day window. Pair with [Conversion Lag](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/conversion-lag) to see the click-to-conversion-time distribution; if your merchant's typical lag is 4-day-median, a 3-day window will show 50 percent of the eventual conversions, badly understating ROAS. **My spend just spiked overnight. What's the playbook?** In order of likelihood: (1) **Daily-budget cap missing or raised.** A campaign with no daily cap will spend the monthly budget in days. Check **Outbrain → Campaign → Budget Settings**. (2) **Bid algorithm scaled up automatically.** Outbrain's "Conversions" bid model raises bids when conversion volume is available; a publisher inventory window opening can drive 2 to 5× normal CPC overnight. (3) **A new campaign launched without spend caps.** Confirm via [Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-by-campaign). (4) **Currency mis-configuration.** Rare, but if the marketer account's currency was changed mid-period the historical spend re-states. **How does Outbrain compare to Taboola?** The two are the dominant native-content-recommendation networks. Outbrain has historically had a slight quality edge on premium publisher inventory (CNN, BBC, The Guardian); Taboola has broader reach in long-tail. ROAS bands are similar (1×-3× typical for cold-prospecting). Many DTC brands run both as portfolio diversification; the right answer is usually to test 30-day campaigns on each at matched budgets and compare per-channel CPA. Don't aggregate; the audiences overlap but are not identical. **The conversions on my Outbrain dashboard differ from my Shopify orders. Why?** Three reasons. (1) **Pixel coverage.** Outbrain conversions only fire when its tag fires; ad blockers (10-25 percent of UK users) silently miss the pixel. Shopify sees every paid order. (2) **Attribution model.** Outbrain takes credit on a 30-day-click + 1-day-view window; many of those orders also got a final touch from email, organic search, or direct, multi-touch attribution would split the credit. (3) **Cross-device.** Outbrain user-stitching is weaker than Meta's; cross-device journeys that browse on mobile and buy on desktop often miss attribution. **Treat the commerce platform as the truth for revenue; treat Outbrain's number as "what the channel claims to influence".** **Should I optimise for spend or for ROAS?** Depends on funnel stage. Outbrain runs in the prospecting bucket; the right question is "is the spend acquiring net-new audience that downstream channels can convert?" not "is this campaign's last-click ROAS profitable?". For pure last-click ROAS Outbrain rarely wins; for incremental-prospecting reach it can be efficient. The most rigorous merchants run a 30-day on/off lift study every 6 months, halt all Outbrain spend for 14 days, measure the dip in branded-search and direct traffic, and use that as the true incremental-ROAS baseline. **Does spend include agency markup or rebates?** The card reports the figure Outbrain bills you for, before any agency markup or platform rebate. If your agency adds a 15 percent management fee on top, your P\&L sees `spend × 1.15`; this card sees `spend`. Pair with your finance team's media-cost report for the all-in P\&L view. **Why is "today" spend lower than I expect at 4pm?** Reporting ingestion lag. Outbrain's API publishes spend data with a 1-to-4-hour delay. At 16:00 GMT the card shows spend through approximately 12:00-14:00 GMT, plus or minus some skew. Same-day numbers settle by next morning. Don't make budget decisions on partial-day data; use the rolling 7-day instead. **My Awareness campaign has 0.4× ROAS. Is it broken?** No, that's the structural shape of awareness campaigns. Awareness is meant to seed brand-discovery for *future* direct/branded conversions, last-click ROAS captures none of that lift. Either commit to running an Outbrain-native lift study to quantify halo effect, accept the campaign as a brand-investment line-item separate from performance, or cut. Most DTC brands cut, the lift study is genuinely hard to run rigorously and the brand-investment justification doesn't hold up when retention spend is competing for the same budget. **Can I track Outbrain spend by publisher / placement?** Partially. Outbrain reports at the *campaign-level* in the API; *section-level* breakdown (which publisher pages drove clicks) is in the dashboard but not the API by default. Apply for the *Section-Level Reporting API* through your Outbrain rep if this is a hard requirement. Vortex IQ surfaces what the API exposes; richer publisher-level views require Outbrain-side enablement. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Total Spend* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Outbrain and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.