Outbrain Ad Formats Explained: Clip, Story & Zoom (2026)

Outbrain put three new ad formats on the table at its March 2022 unveil event, and most media buyers walked away confused about which one actually moves conversions. The headline claim was loud: one of the formats can almost double your conversion rate. The other two are prettier than they are profitable.

If you run direct-response campaigns on the open web, you don't need a tour of every shiny format. You need to know which one earns a test budget and which one quietly burns it. That's the call I'm making here.

Marcel Sattler, founder of native-advertising.net, has deployed more than $100M across Taboola, Outbrain, Newsbreak, MGID, Yahoo Native, Mediago, and RevContent since 2015 — almost entirely on DTC, dropshipping, lead-gen, and affiliate offers — so when Outbrain ships a new format, the only question that matters is whether it converts. Here's how the three formats from that event hold up.

What are the new Outbrain ad formats?

Outbrain is one of the largest native traffic sources in the world. Its unveil event is run in the Apple-keynote style — new products, new bidding strategies, new ad formats announced in one sitting. The March 2022 edition introduced three formats worth a media buyer's attention:

• Clip — a 10-second video or GIF that ends on a direct call-to-action card.
• Story Ads — Instagram-style vertical stories, served on the open web instead of inside a social app.
• Zoom Experience — a full-screen image that shrinks as the reader scrolls, revealing a logo and a Buy Now button.

The same keynote also covered new bidding strategies and ad-tech updates. Those matter, but they aren't formats you can switch on in a creative — so the three above are where the testing decision lives.

Outbrain Clip: the 10-second format worth testing

Clip is the one I'm hyped about, and it's the only one of the three I'd hand a budget to on day one.

Here's the mechanic: Clip is a 10-second video or GIF, and the moment the clip ends, an end card appears with a direct call-to-action. That structure is the whole point. You get 10 seconds to introduce a product or a service, then you hard-cut to the conversion ask. It isn't a brand-awareness video that hopes the viewer remembers you later. It's performance-driven by design.

The number Outbrain put on it: Clip can almost double your conversion rate versus a static image ad. Treat that as a vendor claim, not a guarantee — but a near-2x lift is exactly the kind of swing that's worth a controlled test against your existing image creatives.

Video has been the conversion engine on Meta for years, and that pull is now reaching native platforms like Outbrain. If you already produce video for Facebook or TikTok, Clip lets you bring a 10-second cut to the open web without starting from a blank page. For DTC and dropshipping accounts, that's the first format I'd line up — see /solutions/ecommerce for how we structure video-first creative on native.

Outbrain Story Ads: recycle social content, but watch the fit

Story Ads look almost identical to Instagram stories — vertical, full-bleed, swipeable — except they run on websites across the open web instead of inside a social feed.

The upside is real for one specific reason: content recycling. If you already have Instagram or TikTok story content sitting in a folder, Story Ads give you a place to run it on native traffic without reshooting. That's free at-bats on creative you've already paid to make.

The caution is the fit. The story format was born inside social apps where people are primed to tap through. On the open web, served next to an article, I'm not convinced it's the natural way to drive conversions the way Clip is. There's a possible angle on audience: native skews a bit older than Instagram, so a story unit could be a way to reach a younger reader on the open web. That's a hypothesis to test, not a reason to shift your core budget. If your offer leans on lead-gen, prove it on a small spend before scaling — /solutions/lead-gen covers how we ringfence test budgets.

Outbrain Zoom Experience: high screen real estate, but it interrupts

Zoom Experience is the format I'm most skeptical of, and the reason is structural.

On mobile, you scroll down an article and a large image fills the screen. As you keep scrolling, the image shrinks and reveals the brand logo, a short intro, and a Buy Now button. Visually it's dynamic and it grabs a lot of the user's screen while they read. On a phone, it looks great.

But native advertising's whole edge is that it doesn't interrupt. A standard native unit sits at the bottom of the article and waits for intent. Zoom Experience does the opposite — the reader is trying to get through the copy on a news page, and a big image pops up mid-scroll. That's an interruption, and it doesn't feel like the rest of the page. For a format built on blending in, that's a real tension.

I don't have a verdict yet, and I won't fake one. We'll set up campaigns on Zoom Experience and let the data settle the argument — but it sits behind Clip in line, not ahead of it.

How to test new native formats without wasting budget

New formats are a "try and error" exercise, and the platform's own conversion claim is the start of the test, not the end of it. Here's the order I'd run these three Outbrain formats in:

1. Clip first. It's performance-driven, it's a 10-second video plus a CTA card, and it carries the near-2x conversion claim. Test it head-to-head against your best static image ad.
2. Story Ads second — only if you already have story content to recycle, and only on a small spend to check whether the format fits your offer.
3. Zoom Experience last. Run it to learn, but expect the interruption problem to show up in the numbers.

Across all three, the discipline is the same one I apply to every platform from Taboola to RevContent: don't trust the keynote slide, isolate the variable, and give it a few weeks before you decide. A format that looks great on a phone and a format that converts are two different things. My read can change in a few weeks once the data lands — and so should yours. See /case-studies for how that testing discipline plays out on live accounts.

Watch the full breakdown

Where to go from here

Formats come and go on native platforms, and chasing every launch is a fast way to scatter your budget. The job is to spot the one format that's actually built for conversions — here, that's Clip — and pressure-test it against what's already working in your account before you scale.

If you're running DTC, lead-gen, or affiliate offers on Outbrain and want a second opinion on which formats deserve spend, book a strategy call. We manage this testing across every major network — start with /outbrain-agency if Outbrain is your primary source, or /resources for more breakdowns like this one.