Publishers Want in on the Content-Recommendation Game

By: Lucia Moses | Digiday

Building an online audience is tough for a publisher to do — if they care about having a reputable brand based on editorial content that people actually want to read and share. There are content-recommendation widgets from third parties like Outbrain and Taboola that publishers can slap on their sites. (Digiday uses Taboola to suggest related Digiday stories.)

It’s easy money: Host publishers get paid when readers click out and can recycle some of their own content through the widgets. But these widgets have come under fire for purveying low-quality content and misleading ads that can downgrade readers’ trust in the site. Taboola had its own problems earlier this week when it fell victim to hacking.