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At this morning’s American Association of Advertising Agencies’ public relations forum, the New York Times’ executive vice president of advertising Meredith Levien threw a cat in with the pigeons.
The Times’ sponsored content (or ‘native advertising’ depending on your preference for buzzwords) was performing roughly as well as its editorial content, Levien said. In some cases, much better. The newspaper’s interactive feature for the Winter Olympic games in Sochi, produced with United Airlines, was viewed nearly 200,000 times, far superseding a typical editorial piece. Its paid post program launched in January and it has signed on eight advertisers, with more set to join shortly.
Levien’s remarks will inevitably serve as proof for fans of sponsored content and those who consider it the intellectual apocalypse, that their side is in the right. There are two groups of people with nothing in common who have their arms in the air right now yelling “I told you so.”...
Content marketing is not just a growing trend — it’s a growing necessity to succeed in today’s marketplace. With over 70 percent of marketers increasing their budget on content this year, it’s imperative that they understand content marketing best practices before diving in too quickly. The following infographic includes tips & tactics from 14 experts taken from recent content marketing events; intended to help you adjust your current content strategy to add value, drive engagement and increase leads.
Native advertising is paid content that matches a publication’s editorial standards while meeting the audience’s expectations.
Think Captain Morgan’s campaign on BuzzFeed in general, their 15 Things You Didn’t Know About 15 Captains, Commanders And Conquerors article in particular.
First off, the theme of the article matches the brand’s values: Captain Morgan was a real live pirate who thrived on adventure and raw conquest — a theme not too foreign to BuzzFeed readers.
Moreover, the article matches the editorial standards of BuzzFeed: a list with big images and short, quirky copy — a format their audience expects....
...Although companies understand the part about becoming a media company they missed something very important: media companies don’t create media about themselves. This is why companies have problems with the content they produce, people are immediately skeptical about any media that is about the company that produces it — no matter how high the quality.
Take a look at the Nielsen study released this week, commissioned by InPowered. It found that branded content ranked extremely low among consumers but content written by journalists — independent of any brand — ranked very highly....
It’s the latest craze, the emerging brand sponsored content site where companies pump out content off of their corporate website with the hopes of connecting to their target consumer in a way that doesn’t feel “Salesy.”
Visit sites like Forbes or Inc. and find brand sponsored content from global companies like SAP, Disney and EMC where the line between the pieces being native and advertisements is so thin that it could slide under a closed door.
This trend doesn’t root in hunches or guesses, it roots in truth; people trust content when it informs and educates and that is what these brands are doing, only they are doing it so intelligently that they have created the newest form of media company…
For as long as there’s been media, there has been a revolving door between newspapers, magazines and PR firms,” said Evan Hansen, senior editor at Medium. “As far as that goes, nothing is new.”
Hansen should know. He recently walked through that door himself, departing as Wired.com’s editor in chief to put down stakes in the land of content. While the path he took has been traveled by journalists before him, it’s undeniable that something has changed. Brands are luring away big names in journalism — Newsweek’s Dan Lyons and Melissa Lafsky Wall, PandoDaily’s Hamish McKenzie, Wired’s Michael Copeland, USA Today’s Michelle Kessler – and these writers aren’t churning out press releases; they’re still telling stories....
AOL’s ad chief on the shape of the future...
There is a lot of debate regarding “what’s next” in digital advertising. But when we look back at 2014 a year from now, I believe these three disruptions will have played a role in the ongoing transformation of digital advertising.
The New York Times has sold its soul for a handful of beans...and there's no magical beanstalk to save it from a very bad decision.
Native advertising is the world’s worst idea and I can’t believe the New York Times management is so gullible and clueless in agreeing to its publication. Gullible — because they were talked into giving away their hard won position as the nation’s top newspaper by marketing people looking for short-term gains.
Clueless — because they can’t see the stupidity of their actions and how they’ve shot themselves in the foot, groin, and brains.The brands and marketing agencies are clueless, too. The practice is exceptionally harmful because it makes it seem as if all content is corrupt...
Last year, Coca-Cola launched the Journey website as its own media outlet, using an editorial, image-heavy format.
Fuelled by the brand's Content 2020 plan, the redesign was described as 'the most ambitious rethink of Coca-Cola’s web properties' since it launched the first website in 1995.
The company has gone from being declared 'creatively bankrupt' by a chief exec in 2004 to being named Creative Marketer of the Year at Cannes in 2013.
But the brand hasn't stopped there. One of its goals is to 'kill the press release', reducing the number of press releases by half by the end of this year and wanting them gone entirely by 2015....
Go big or go home, right? Brands everywhere are going over the top to impress consumers and grab their attention. To do this, they’re coupling pranks with video advertising strategies to create compelling content that goes viral. While some marvel at the creativity, others argue that prankvertising goes too far. Regardless, the power of the latest trend in video advertising is undeniable. Here are some of our favorite prankvertisements.
Ah, names...
Inbound Marketing. Content Marketing. Social Media Marketing. Brand Journalism.
There are a bunch of names out there for what are essentially the same thing: How creating amazing information and publishing it on the web drives action.
A decade from now I'm quite certain we won't be calling these things out as separate disciplines. It's all just marketing, isn't it?
No matter what you call it, when you understand your buyers and create something interesting to them like a blog post, video, infographic or engage on a social network it creates something that the search engines find and that people share...
How news organisations are building commercial teams of former journalists who create paid-for content on behalf of brands...
The Huffington Post, in conjunction with parent company AOL, last month published a report which proposed that native advertising is "sponsored content, which is relevant to the consumer experience, which is not interruptive, and which looks and feels similar to its editorial environment".
Perhaps the easiest way to understand it is by looking at a couple of examples, such as the Guardian's 'what to wear on a date' video, sponsored by John Lewis, with clothes featured in the video from the department store, and BuzzFeed's '20 coolest hybrid animals', created for hybrid car Toyota Prius....
I’d like to offer a word of caution for those who may be over-excited about native advertising. Native advertising works for a couple of reasons; audiences aren’t used to embedded corporate content, and these media forms are somewhat deceptive, and don’t appear as sponsored.
Those two factors create a bubble that will surely burst once readers and viewers get tricked enough times.Just this past Monday a friend complained about a Buzzfeed article focusing on entertainment ideas that happneed to be sponsored by a potato chip company. The problem with the article its lack of disclosure, and every suggestion was followed by a push for X-brand chips....
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As more and more brands dive in to native advertising, the question remains: are these ads actually profitable for brands?
Examples of these native ads run from the advertorial to sponsored content to interstitial ads on mobile phone apps. And options are multiplying. As is the money spent.
The question brands must ask (even though there is no simple answer) is: are we getting a positive return on the dollars being spent on native advertising?I asked a few players in the space what they thought....
Hill+Knowltons Group SJR doesnt make branded content. It makes publications that you might not even realize come from company marketing budgets.
Thanks to the Internet, anyone can now be a publisher.
Which is kind of like saying that anyone in a crowded football stadium could stand and deliver an eloquent speech. The hard part is not making noise. The hard part is getting people to listen. So by most aspiring publications’ definitions of success, a technology blog called the Txchnologist has made it. Last year, its articles were picked up about 200 times, including in Time, Smithsonian magazine, and on MSN News.
You may have seen its coverage of temporary tattoos that could make electric telekinesis possible. Or eyewear that could help people with red-green color blindness.
But what you may not have noticed, unless you read all the way to the bottom of an article or navigated to the blog’s homepage, is that the entire production comes out of GE’s marketing budget. It’s been created by a branch of PR firm Hill+Knowlton called Group SJR....
Ask any lifestyle magazine publisher how they’re making up for declining print revenue, and chances are they’ll mention e-commerce. But while countless publishers are struggling to drive dollars via online shopping, there’s a growing number of e-commerce companies moving in the opposite direction.
In recent months, customers of online-only retailers like Rent the Runway, JackThreads and Birchbox have received catalogs—yes, those old-school, printed booklets—in their mailboxes, while flash sale site One Kings Lane has been sending out “magalogs” combining decorating tips with photographs of rooms populated by the site’s ever-changing inventory....
Native advertising, when used intelligently, can work incredibly well -- which is exactly why it's so controversial.
This is the first post in a series on native advertising. An introduction, if you will.
One that states from the start that there is controversy.
Why approach a series this way?
Simple: Native advertising is probably one of the least-known scalding-hot topics in the business world.
In fact, few business people can even define native advertising. And those outside of it are clueless it even exists (we’ve got the data to prove this — will share later).Yet media research group BIA/Kelsey predicts that by 2017, brands will spend $4.57 billion on social native ads....
Companies everywhere are building corporate news operations. We talked to some of the best to find out how they did it.
... If you’re the CEO or CMO of a mid-sized or large brand, you may have started thinking about building an in-house news operation of your own. To help you get there, we’ve created an ebook, The CMO’s Guide to Brand Journalism.
The book will help you structure a team and figure out what obstacles you should expect to encounter and how to get over them. We also explain the structure of a newsroom, and how to map that structure to a corporate environment.
Also provided is an explanation of four business models adopted by various companies. The four models are explained via case studies developed by interviewing journalists and executives at Microsoft, IBM, GE, Intel, Adobe, and other companies....
From rich media to programmatic buying, we've got you covered.
Anyone starting a career in the advertising industry is presented with a digital advertising ecosystem with numerous intricacies and a befuddling number of buzzwords and acronyms.
What is the difference between native advertising and sponsored content? Or programmatic buying and real-time bidding? We want to put you on the path of advertising jargon mindfulness. Below, you'll find easy-to-read descriptions of some of the industry's hottest buzzwords, the phrases you've heard a bunch of times but maybe don't quite totally understand....
Content marketing costs less than advertising, and more people engage with it.It sounds like a revolution but actually there are some rather unkind hidden truths in all of this.
Much like the pigs at the end of Animal Farm, with the evil predecessor gone, what’s replaced it looks… very similar indeed.George Orwell, Animal Farm: "Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which..."
Marketers and publishers will keep a close eye on the Times' foray into the native-ad space, where the Times' entrance serves as a tacit endorsement of the emerging and controversial practice. Times CEO Mark Thompson has also said native advertising will be a salvo in the company's fight to restore growth to its limping digital ad revenue.
As the program takes flight and the Times works out the bugs in its redesign, here are five details you may not know about the latest entrant in the native-ad space.
Times staff pitched story ideas to Dell. One of Dell's first paid posts delves into the topic of millennials in the workplace. The author is a freelancer that the Times contracted, according to Ms. Losee. The millennial generation is among four topics Dell customers are interested in learning more about, she said. A Times editor -- not from its newsroom, but instead part of an internal "content studio" -- pitched ideas to Dell around these topics that weren't related to Dell products. Dell approved the story ideas, which the Times farmed out to freelancers....
The End of Advertising as We Know It--and What to Do Now | Fast Company
...Kodak filed for bankruptcy while Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1 billion. Airbnb is now filling more nights than Hilton Hotels. Nike+ Kinect Training [created by AKQA] is now "as good as a real trainer, costs less than a one hour’s lesson, and it’s 24/7 at home," as Chris Anderson put it.
The reality is this: Business ideas from the least expected players and angles will disrupt your brand faster than advertising can save it. A couple of years after the world’s biggest advertising award show ditched the word advertising, we’ve reached an inflection point: Advertising as we know it has come to an end.
Now what? Here are a few principles that can guide the shift from the Old World Order to the New World Order....
Read more: http://www.fastcocreate.com/1683292/the-end-of-advertising-as-we-know-it-and-what-to-do-now
Last year, Coca-Cola launched the Journey website as its own media outlet, using an editorial, image-heavy format.
Fuelled by the brand's Content 2020 plan, the redesign was described as 'the most ambitious rethink of Coca-Cola’s web properties' since it launched the first website in 1995.
The company has gone from being declared 'creatively bankrupt' by a chief exec in 2004 to being named Creative Marketer of the Year at Cannes in 2013.
But the brand hasn't stopped there. One of its goals is to 'kill the press release', reducing the number of press releases by half by the end of this year and wanting them gone entirely by 2015.Another recent development is the launch of its own blogger contributor network, similar to LinkedIn's Influencer programme, but focusing on new talent instead of 'big names', called 'The Opener'....
Sharing quality content with their audience, engaging with readers below the line and building their brand, these are just some of the tips for new journalists shared at a journalism event today.
Speaking at the NCTJ's Journalism Skills Conference at Bournemouth University, a panel were asked to give advice to journalists, particularly those entering the field.
The panel featured Peter Bale, vice president and general manager of CNN International Digital; Pete Clifton, executive producer for MSN UK; and Liisa Rohumaa, a journalism lecturer at Bournemouth University...
How can publishers and advertisers survive in today's economy?
Only 6% of the 18-24 population read newspapers; the majority of newspaper readers in this country are in their fifties and sixties. Audiences for CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News pull in viewers with a median age of 60 or above, according to media research company Nielsen.Websites like Yahoo News and Huffington Post pull more traffic than CNN.com or The New York Times website. In two years, Buzzfeed (designed to stimulate social media with listicles: "25 Crazy Things...") has nearly tripled its monthly unique visitors, from 4.3 million to 19.3 million.
Traditional news has lost young people, the gold standard for advertisers....
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What do you think? Decline of journalism or better advertising? Some purists are feeling like the patient is now on life support.