• by Sara Guaglione , January 18, 2016

Outbrain, a content discovery platform, today announced that it will give personalized content recommendations to its newest publishing partner, The Washington Post, and provide sponsored content.

Outbrain has added The Washington Post to its list of what it calls “premium partners.”

WaPo will also be able to tailor the recommendations as they appear across desktop, tablet and mobile environments, including those for sponsored content. That way articles like “How This Comedian Got ‘Accidentally’ Pregnant” don’t pop up underneath a WaPo article about the recent Democratic presidential debate.

Outbrain is a third-party system that provides those "Other stories from around the Web" recommendations at the bottom of articles. The company’s content discovery platform surfaces sponsored content to users from across the web, including relevant videos and stories tailored to the reader.

The platform gives publishers the ability to understand in real time how users engage with content, the company claims, allowing media companies to manage recommendations, understand and maximize the monetization of audiences.

Josh Feller, senior vice president of global business development at Outbrain, runs the team that is responsible for cutting distribution deals with publishers.

Feller explained to Publishers Daily that Outbrain had to demonstrate to The Washington Post that the paid recommendations met the publication's “tough” editorial standards.

“This is an important deal for us because we were able to meet and exceed the editorial bar that they set for us for our paid recommendations to appear on their pages,” he said.

Feller added that WaPo’s editorial team had “a very large say” in what kind of content would appear on the site. For example, content could range from branded content from Ford, Dell or HP or content from Time Inc. or Forbes, Feller said.

“Content that is not appropriate would not be there,” he added.

Feller said Outbrain’s goal is to “keep editors happy, keep the business folks happy and have a nice stream of revenue come in” for the newspaper.

Outbrain’s other “premium partners” include Time Inc., ESPN, CNN, Le Monde, Fox News, The Guardian, Slate, The Telegraph, New York Post and Sky News.