Technology profile · Managed partner

Outbrain Direct Response

Name: Outbrain Direct Response
Brand: Teads

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Pricing model: Not disclosed
Category: Trading Desk & Media Activation
Engagement type: Managed partner
HQ: Not disclosed

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Summary Full Detail

Full Detail adds: Case study evidence notes (5) — further down this page.

What it is

Performance-focused native advertising and content discovery platform for the open internet, founded 2006 in Israel by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav (both former Israeli Navy officers) and headquartered in New York. Now operates as Outbrain Direct Response (ODR), a subsidiary brand of Teads following Outbrain's February 2025 acquisition of Teads and the combined company's rename. Pioneered native ad recommendation widgets (the "recommended for you" boxes historically seen on major news sites) and has since repositioned specifically around direct-response and lead-generation performance, particularly for affiliate and search-buyer verticals.

Financial standing

TEAD

NASDAQ Global Select Market

Publicly traded

Formerly Outbrain (ticker OB); completed its acquisition of Teads in February 2025 and renamed the combined company Teads, trading under TEAD. Altice Teads S.A. is the largest disclosed shareholder at roughly 45.58% (as of a February 2026 filing), a real concentration worth noting even though it is not a subsidiary relationship.

The company reporting on this profile is the merged, publicly traded entity, not the pre-merger Teads video business alone.

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Product architecture

01Outbrain Direct Response (ODR): the core rebrand and repositioning of the historical Outbrain native-recommendation product specifically around performance and ROI outcomes, rather than the original engagement/pageview-focused positioning.
02Buy Your Way: multiple named buying options for advertisers (self-serve and managed service, per Outbrain's own site navigation), a distinct product path from the always-buyer-facing DSP model.
03OB Code: a named tracking and analytics product (referenced directly in the Aroundhome case study) enabling data-driven optimization and CPA tracking for advertisers.
04Referral Program and Partners Program: named channel/affiliate-facing programs, consistent with Outbrain's heavy concentration of case studies in the Affiliate vertical specifically.
05Publisher-facing supply: now routed through Teads-branded pages (teads.com/media-owners) rather than a separate Outbrain publisher product, reflecting the 2025 merger's structural integration on the supply side even where the demand-side Outbrain brand persists.

Distinctive asset

One of the two companies (alongside Taboola) that effectively created and still define the native content-recommendation category; both are now covered separately in this library, worth comparing directly given their near-identical origin story and current competitive overlap. Outbrain went public independently in July 2021 (Nasdaq: OB, raising 160 million dollars at close to a 1.1 billion dollar valuation) before its own 2025 acquisition of Teads, meaning Outbrain is technically the surviving public entity/ticker lineage even though the combined company adopted the Teads name and brand going forward, an unusual direction for a merger-driven rebrand worth noting explicitly.

Market coverage

Per Wikipedia (2019 figure): promoted articles found on 108,121 websites; per a 2020 figure, an average of 10 billion recommendations delivered daily for 20,000+ advertisers. At IPO (2021), Outbrain partnered with publishers and marketers in more than 55 countries via 18 global offices. Outbrain's own current homepage states a presence in 8 offices speaking 17 languages, a notable reduction in office count from the 2021 IPO-era figure, consistent with post-merger consolidation into Teads' existing footprint rather than necessarily a shrinking business.