Jim Boulton, Partner at Story Worldwide

Story operates on the idea that advertising-as-interruption is over. Instead, they “connect brands to customers by telling engaging and entertaining stories that audiences actually want to hear”.

Story’s commitment to content marketing comes from its peculiar marriage of a digital skillset combined with a publishing mindset – that is to say, creating expert digital properties for brands that regularly publish new content over a given period.

Treat each brand like a magazine programme

According to Jim, the best brands sites are very generous with their content.

“The campaigns and websites that are most successful have been the ones with content at the heart. If you can encourage people to come back to your site regularly, then you are more likely to get a conversion. The best way to do this is make brands – a *repeat* publishing platform – with a content plan to encourage people to turn up”

Examples include:

• Duchy Original has over 150 products and there are stories supporting each product. Since each product description is keyword rich and optimised, the product are topping search engine rankings.
• Oasis‘ blog does not get a huge amount of traffic but conversions from the blog are higher than conversions from customers who go to the primary e-commerce site first. The plentiful Oasis content on the blog encourages a longer dwell time which according to Jim runs contrary to the received wisdom that ‘the quickest number of clicks to get to the product, but not necessarily an ideal. Instead, Jim argues, branded content was a great way to build a relationship over a series of touchpints:

“Branded content might create a  longer acquisition cycle but it leads to better qualified, more loyal customers and, ultimately, more spend” – Jim Boulton

Nudge marketing; using content at multiple touchpoints

An example of a customer journey through branded content

Nudge marketing is:

“The result of creating multiple ‘sign-posts’ across the social web that point people towards pieces of branded content. Once people have engaged with this content, we learn about their likes and dislikes and they can be ‘nudged’ towards increasingly relevant content and ultimately to a branded destination or point of purchase”.

Marketers need to achieve this by literally turning their brands into stories - creating original media that their customers actually choose to engage with, explore and then recommend to others. The number of signposts can be dramatically increased through the addition of links you buy, which include paid search, rented lists, seeding initiatives, traditional advertising and media planning and buying. These techniques allow you to distribute links across a far wider network to a much greater audience.

The narrative begins with introductory content that helps people ‘learn’ about the brand, before moving on to immersive content and tools that help people ‘live’ and eventually ‘share’ the brand (see the framework below).

Once they’ve devised a content strategy and a sustainable programme for each Brand, Story maximise their efforts to make the content more discoverable on disparate sites:

• Every article or interview with locals is  made it keyword rich around specific terms and phrases (inc non-branded terms)
• Podcast interviews were transcribed to create more keywords
• Videos are made of interviews and uploaded to Youtube
• Where appropriate, photos of relevant brand subject  on Flickr
• Hyperlinks and metadata are used methodically to direct readers back to a brand site

“Nudging a potential customer directly from awareness to consideration to purchase in a single journey is a big ask. It is more likely that the consumer will be directed to increasingly relevant content as part of a mutual learning process, in which brand and audience learn more about one another. Eventually a level of trust will be established and the consumer will have an innate predisposition to the brand” – Jim Boulton

 If you are interested in learning more about content marketing, or how our platform will enable you to de-risk your content marketing – please do get in touch.

Content Marketing is an invaluable part of any marketing strategy.

Whether part of a print or digital offering, content is a conduit through which brands can:

• entertain
• fill an information gap
• change opinion
• build long-term relationship with consumers

Unsurprisingly, a robust content marketing proposition is imperative if you wish to attract, engage and retain prospects and customers.

The results of the above infographic are based upon results from a survey of 24 major consumer brands.

To read more about the importance of content marketing, go here.

We wanted to create a forum for networking, learning and discussion around eCRM and “content marketing” (ie using content to attract, engage, and retain customers). So, I am pleased to announce that on August 10th, we will have our first Content Marketing Breakfast, for a select group of agency executives.

This event will be a great opportunity to make new contacts, discuss emerging trends and to start the day with a really good breakfast!

The main topic for the event is “Content Marketing and the Role of the Social Editor”. Brands are now publishers, and quality, relevant content is a vehicle for building strong customer relationships. Martin Harrison (Head of Social Media at Tullo Marshall Warren) will lead a discussion on this emerging trend and its implications.

The event will be organised in conjunction with the Like Minds Club and will be held at their gorgeous location just off Trafalgar Square.

This is an invite-only event. To request an invite and agenda, please email events@idioplatform.com.

It’s definitely a topic you hear a lot about, but what does it actually mean? Years ago it consisted of custom publishing and customer magazines, but it’s taken on a whole new importance on digital channels.

Content builds relationships between publisher and reader. It fills an informational or entertainment need. And as a result, encourages more brand interactions. It is a social object; it gets shared quickly and easily if it is good. And increasingly, the interaction with content can be measured (influence, popularity etc) and linked to direct commercial advantage.

A content marketing definition

The creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content to attract and engage a defined target audience – with a clear commercial objective.

To elaborate on this, there are a few ‘pillars’ of content marketing worth bullet pointing: (large hat-tip here to Joe Pulizzi):

• Editorial-based content – must be informative, educational or entertaining.
• Marketing backed – there is an underlying commercial objective for the publisher
• Behaviour-driven – seeks to maintain or alter the reader’s behaviour
• Multi-platform – can be across print, digital, audio, video, events
• Targeted at an audience – if you can’t name the audience, it’s not content marketing

And “content marketing” is being adopted by functions beyond traditional “marketing” as the enterprise organises itself around consumers.

• PRs create content for direct publication in the press, or as corporate communications, but increasingly in the form of blog posts, videos, and tweets.
• SEOs create content to make a brand rank well on search engines.
• Customer support teams create and deliver content to customers to solve needs.
• Marketers create content to position the brand an attract interest customers.
• Salespeople craft persuasive content to overcome sales objections and close.
• Advertisers create content that is impactful and shareable; as earned media rather than just bought media.

It is easy now to hear what people are saying. It’s easy to get directly involves in the conversation with new content, or recommend existing content. And these new platforms are free at the point of use.

So why doesn’t everyone do it?

• “We aren’t publishers!” – but many companies are now hiring editors and content strategists to do this job for them.
• “What happens if we say the wrong thing?” – but with good procedure and people, you will safely present a personality, rather than be left behind preaching to no one.
• “There are no tangible results” – good content marketing is measurable and produces real results. Just ask us.
• “It isn’t worth it” – your competitors are, or soon will be, doing it, and they will become the most visible, trusted and liked voice in your market.

Content Marketing Strategy

Although this clearly depends on the context of your company, idio’s basic content marketing strategy can be used as a framework:

• Connect with people by publishing relevant, quality content
• Build trust where they come back
• Gain insight every time they interact with you to deliver better value
• Become the authority in your market when they rely on you
• Develop a commercially valuable relationship

For more information about blended content marketing (authoring content alongside aggregation and curation of other people’s content), see this post.

For more information and some great experts on this topic, have a look at:

• The Content Marketing Institute
• The Content Marketing Playbook
• Post Advertising (by Story Worldwide)
• Content Marketing Today
• A list of top Content Marketing blogs

The Jargon Buster

In an industry which is littered with Three Letter Acronyms, idio is committed to making things understandable. The Jargon Buster is a series of blog posts that explain, and give context to, a range of industry acronyms and phrases. Please feel free to suggest new submissions.

If you are a brand or media  company wanting to increase the value of your existing and future content assets, and deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time on the right channel, do give us a call. idio delivers strategic technology-driven solutions to organise your content around your customer. We help you solve problems and deliver tangible value. To find out more, see http://idioplatform.com.

photo from azconceptphoto.com

To the naked eye, there isn’t much common ground between the concept of brand content and the ninja’s way of life. Example. While espionage, sabotage and assassination are nifty tricks in a ninja’s trade, they are not mandatory for brands. Still, it’s good to know that some guidelines that have been upheld for centuries by the ‘stealth soldiers’ are actually totally applicable for companies today.

What about brand content?

More and more companies are starting to focus spend on brand content. There are many ways that this is done, and it appears, even more ways of assessing what works and what doesn’t. Advertising is and will remain an important way for brands to converse with their audience, but now there is a realization that creating content shows existing and potential customers that they’re not just a one-trick pony. This here article points out the four categories of content strategies (heavily summarized below) that every brand’s ‘portfolio’ should behold, but I think it’s likelier that brands might choose a more ‘pick-n-mix’ version of a content assembly line, (in fact, idio’s own Andrew Davies recently wrote about the concept of the ‘Content Pyramid‘, which depicts the execution of a blended content strategy, incorporating aggregated, curated and authored content).

• Original Content - Every (successful) brand content strategy should publish some original content, created and developed by the brand. While original content can be anything from penning blog posts about the market, posting viral videos or writing product messaging, it is important to ensure that the focus is still on meeting the needs of the audience, whilst maintaining the gist of your brand message.
• Co-created Content - This is a fantastic form of content creation if you want to kill two birds with one stone, (very ninja): be cost effective and broaden and diversify your existing content. Co-creation requires you to find and collaborate with people (collaboration is maybe not so ninja, but in this case necessary), who are already developing the kind of content you want your audience to see. The article gives this example: ‘this could be as small scale as reaching out to a star video blogger to co-develop content for the target audience, or as large scale as partnering with one of the new digital studios to develop an online video series. Either choice gets your brand in front of an aggregated audience in your target zone.’ Oftentimes this can be beneficial for both sides, (probably best that it is)-you need their talent (and audience) and they need your funding. Win-win.
• Curated Content - Many brands look to expand content by licensing content from other publishers, primarily video but increasingly bloggers too. Licensing fees are rarely costly, but steps should still be taken by brands to ensure that they’re tapping in creative outlets to spread a message.
• User-Generated Content - Every brand wishes to include one ingredient to their content strategy: participants. The article states, correctly, ‘once you have enough content to keep your video programming fresh and relevant for your brand audience, the next step is to make sure that audience has a way of being heard.’ So more strategizing sessions need to take place on how best to utilize social media and other promotional platforms to enhance audience participation.

Know your stuff. Like a ninja.

What’s interesting about all four categories of content format is that they all firstly require one thing: know your stuff. Know your content strategy. I recently came across this article by Jonathon Baskin that discusses what happens to brands once they’ve already established at least one of these content portfolios. It’s mostly an article that challenges brands on the level of integrity or transparency they keep in their content, something that needs delicate handling. That’s why I’m interpreting that in some ‘key guidelines’ I curated from this neat website for ninjas listing out all the rules to live by, called ‘Rules to Live By’, to give an outline of what brands should think about.

In no particular order:

Ninja Rule #6 – Do nor harbour hatred for thy enemy.
You need to ‘let people disagree’. In other words, no censorship, no editing, no moulding the conversations. Baskin states that brands need to tolerate disagreements and misunderstandings, in order for your message to not be denigrated by giving your audience a false sense of brand prosperity. It’s just not cool.

Ninja Rule #16 – Don’t fight if you don’t know what you’re fighting about.
This is simple. Know your content, know your audience, but more importantly, know what you’re about. Even if your upcoming brand content is veering toward syndicated blogging, a musical Youtube clip every week or something, always maintain a scope in the kind of content you’re pushing out to your audience, because otherwise they’ll call your bluff. This can also run in conjunction with…

Ninja Rule #41. If you suck, then quit

‘Perhaps you should stick to the products and services about which you’re qualified to speak, and allow independent people and communities to separate the wheat from the chaff.’

Ninja Rule #110. Misunderstanding breeds distrust.
Baskin is very firm on saying that having the most advanced technology as a tool doesn’t mean you broadcast just anything with it. ‘Make your brand a relentless source of factual data’. If you get careless and let questionable or inaccurate content slip through the cracks and onto a user’s screen, their trust in you will decrease exponentially.

Ninja Rule #291.The more elaborate your communication, the less you communicate.

This is so relevant but so easy to slip up in. Keep it simple, informative, and, (in moderation), fun. Don’t let your user wade through your content and drown in it. That’s no help to anyone.

Ninja Rule #292. It’s essential to give your arguments impact.

‘Everyone has a bias and ulterior motive, so you can assume that every participant starts with distrust and disbelief…If you insert your brand as a participant in this process, don’t you become just another voice that can be doubted?’ This is your brand content. It’s your responsibility to ensure that borrowed, shared or original content packs a punch and instantly shows the audience the kind of topics and motifs you represent.

Ninja Rule #256.The world is changing, be sure to change with it.
‘Actively encourage independent debates. The logic of new media suggests that a greater number of conversations will get to truthful conclusions quicker.’ The other extreme of Ninja Rule #6, but equally important. Do your homework, and make sure your content is continuously relevant.

The bottom line is that no matter the industry or scope, brands need to become more vigilant in any content they’re subjecting the audience to. There’s no room for slacking off even if you’re licensing content; it’s all supposed to represent your brand and the more accurate/concise/customer-centred your content, the more your audience will thank you for it.

One of the Guardian’s recent mantras has been to “weave their content into the fabric of the web.”  This commercial launch really helps structure that approach and gives a pretty frictionless method of using Guardian content – which can only help in achieving their aims.

My key takeaways were as follows (quotes are paraphrased):

“We are moving from a publisher to a platform” – Mike Bracken

This is a very smart way of wording the transition that old media must make to survive. And it succinctly describes the Guardian’s strategic direction. If the entire organisation, including the newsroom, can start thinking in this way, then the huge value of their expertise and influence in the media landscape can be harnessed for much more than news publishing.

“Our industry is at a decision point: open or closed. We are betting on open, and that digital ad revenues will continue to grow.” – Adam Freeman

Despite being a barely veiled stab at the now-live Times site which requires registration and payment, this simplifies the decision process that every major newspaper is having to make. However, it is worth pointing out that, as we have found recently with Facebook, ‘open’ doesn’t necessarily mean friendly or non-commercial, or free.

“We have been determined to innovate whilst cutting costs. This Open Platform has taken 18 months of development.” – Adam Freeman

What I love about this statement, is that the Guardian have a plan (!). Now clearly other newspapers have a plan too, and I understand that in this rapidly changing landscape every strategy must be iterative. But that being said, a decision must have been made at least 2 years ago, and whilst cutting costs, investment must have been made (or protected) in the technical implementation of this platform. And now it will be handed over to the commercial team for exploitation. Obviously it could all fail on the actual uptake (but I’m betting it won’t), but at this early stage it does seem that they have had the ability to discern the market trends, identify the opportunity, and execute.

Another key theme of the morning was that of distributed content: the realisation that if they stay on a website, their audience will go elsewhere, but if they allow their content to go where the audience is, there are gains to be realised. This is the platform (rather than the publisher) in action.

So far, all impressive talk. There were also some good case-studies of Guardian content on other brand sites, and even external content pulled into the Guardian website via embedded applications. This demonstrates their “open in, open out” approach, where external content and applications can be used in the Guardian as well as Guardian content being used elsewhere.

So for the next steps, three things stuck out to me:

• The Guardian will now go and build an open authentication system across Guardian sites, instead of just using the current closed registration system. (Lots of learnings from Facebook here…)
• They are open to developers building applications to be embedded with the guardian.co.uk with a revenue share. (Oh oh oh…. yes please!)
• There is a huge opportunity for brands who want quality content on their own sites and applications. (We are already building brand content solutions for some major clients, and the ease of integrating the Guardian’s content is huge. Get in touch if you want to know more…)

All in all, the announcements (and more the thinking behind the announcements) certainly got my attention. I have written a lot about the rise of brand publishing and content marketing, and this is the leading example of a major publisher realising and positioning themselves for a trend that will open up a huge and profitable market.

NB: For another post summarising this event, please read the very savvy Nick Burcher‘s post.

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Image via Wikipedia

I recently posted about using Content As A Sales Tool and thought it would be good to follow up by outlining what we see as the greatest benefits in this approach.

We have used various types of content marketing, from automatic aggregations to print magazines. Each has a role and a relevant context. But whatever form you use, there are three key benefits that should guide and focus your planning. The intended outcomes should be defined using at least these three main goals, with tactics for how to achieve them, and a way of actually measuring the achievement!

Visibility

A good volume of quality content enables a brand to be much more visible online, especially in search engine listings and in sharing on the major social networks. Need a first page ranking for relevant keywords? Content is the answer.

Unfortunately for purists, content volume plays a huge role in this, a fact on which content factories like Demand Media build their business. Search engine visibility comes from regularly publishing a LOT of relevant content. And ongoing social network visibility comes when your audience becomes familiar with you, which requires a decent content output.

Tactics to increase your content output might include:

• Setting content volume goals as an organisation
• Including more people in the writing process
• Embedding content creation within the job descriptions of the employees that demonstrate great ability
• Soliciting guest posts, from clients, suppliers, partners, and customers

There are easy ways to measure visibility, including monitoring the search engine rankings for your top keywords, and the number of ‘sharers’ or ‘shares’ on social networks.

Authority

Many brands are completed disconnected from the online conversation in their marketplace. Creating relevant content starts building those connections, and positions the company as an authority in its field.

By talking to the vocal members of your audience, you will start to build relationships. These relationships can be very low-touch, but enable you to build a position of prominence in your chosen field. Your company has a huge amount of tacit knowledge in its marketplace, and the simple process of starting to turn this into simple, small, content assets can be a great way of building authority. Create “How-Tos”, User Guides, and best practice Case Studies. Your company, and its staff, also has an opinion. When relevant breaking news is happening, why not publish your thoughts on the issue. The opinions shared within your organisation are usually very well-informed and insightful. Get them out there.

It is hard to measure authority, but it can be partially measure by the number of people referring to you, whether in terms of links from other websites, or links from content shared on social networks. You know you have built authority when your target audience defers to you on an issue, or solicits your opinion.

Engagement

Content provides the foundation for deep and long engagement with potential customers. It requires little of the end-user, and in fact meets their informational or entertainment needs. This engagement forms the basis for initiating customer relationships on a large scale.

Many companies try and force regular email broadcasts to their customers, in the hope of increasing purchases. And it works, but the conversion rates are very low. Instead of continually pushing offers and product announcements down their throats, using relevant content can not only increase the value to the end user, but also provide valuable information.

By asking customers to subscribe to a news feed (with opinion, market news, etc), you lessen the buy-in needed from the customer. You also open up other very interesting opportunities. For example, rather than delivering one set of content to everyone, why not segment it by stated preferences to make it even more valuable?

Whatever engagement your content is achieving, it must be tracked to be useful. Monitor engagement closely, and identify the content types and behaviours that increase it. This enables you to make informed decisions about the content you serve, the product messaging you use (and its personalisation), and the products you promote.

And of course, if your one reaction to the above is “ARGH more work – we are not a media company and creating content and tracking engagement is not our competency,” then ping me an email. Hopefully we, or someone we know, have a solution that is right for you.

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So, talking about changing business models…. let’s get on to the meat of this post…

The massive shift I am seeing in the market is a move away from independent, siloed reporting, and towards branded/brand-authored/brand-hosted content (or content marketing, or custom publishing, or aggregated content, or blogging, or whatever form and guise it takes). I have written about the value of this before, and since that post, I have heard clients, agencies, media companies, web development shops, PR firms and e-commerce execs all say the same thing.

Content sells.

As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Before the move to digital communication forms, companies promoted their wares amongst relevant content (newspaper and magazine advertising), or the more adventurous marketing directors launched custom print magazines to engage their audience. Much to old media’s dislike, the shift to digital communications has shifted the power away from them, as anyone can curate, copy, or compete with their quality content through a huge variety of means. Upstart competitors are. Customers are. And their previous big-spending advertisers are.

When the price of purchase falls near enough the price of rental, rental no longer makes economic sense, despite its advantages. This is what has happened with audience attention. Media companies used to rent out their audience’s attention for advertising revenue, but now brands are realising that in many ways, and in most markets, they can indirectly buy that audience’s attention by creating their own relevant, quality content.

Whether it is by licensing news or magazine content, syndicating news feeds, employing journalists, aggregating relevant material, or even tweeting, the appetite for content marketing is growing rapidly.

I’m not one for giving predictions, but I think two very interesting trends will emerge over the next 18-24 months.

• Firstly, just as most agencies have now (at least) tagged on a “social” department, content offerings will begin to be refined into clear products and strategies on a campaign level. I’m not saying this is good (great content is ideally produced as an ongoing function of the business, rather than for a one-off launch), but it is necessary given the current agency engagement structures.
• Secondly, the amount of brand-funded jobs in editorial, journalism, content curation and the like will increase significantly, as companies realise that this skill is vital to their online success. Brands will hire directly, and PR, advertising, and marcomms agencies will build out their capabilities.

So what should you do? Well, if you are doing nothing with content at least start with the below.

• If you are a brand, start experimenting in a small way. Set up a blog system, or aggregate some industry news. Look at the results.
• If you are an agency, look carefully at what is working in this space. Identify the emerging supplier offerings, and look at trialling content-driven campaigns with a few clients.
• If you are a media company, decide now whether you want to work more closely with brands. And if you do, start looking at branded content insertions, or pitch content microsites options to your largest advertising clients.

And of course, do shoot me an email. I’d be very interested to exchange ideas, and most of the people and approaches I recommend won’t even be our own.

Lots to think about.

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http://www.degweb.org

In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the opportunities for brands to connect with their market are endless.

The old model, where magazines, newspapers and TV channels provided a marketplace for brands to inform and persuade consumers is failing. It still has legs, because there is nothing that yet compares to the mass-market impact of buying a 30 second advert slot during a primetime TV show. However, the demise of mass media, caused by the move to online content consumption, audience fragmentation, and the cyclical downturn which has quickly exposed the structural issues in existing media business models, has created a huge opportunity for brands that are willing to engage their customers beyond their transaction.

There are many ways to skin a cat

Traditional media players argue that there is huge value in the quality and volume of audiences that they can amass, and this is true to a point. When advertising in a premium publication, the brand aligns itself with the goodwill, history and quality of the publication. But its becoming harder and harder to make this case, when that same audience can be sliced and diced, and reached more cost-effectively through a huge variety of online publishers and communities, PPC campaigns, email marketing, SEO, etc…

How can long-established and highly-reputable titles such as Businessweek be worth $1? Fundamentally, the reason is the major value of most consumer publications is their audience. And while Businessweek still has a valuable and influential audience, it no longer can claim to be the gatekeeper for that community (or even one of the gatekeepers). It can’t claim to be the one voice that holds the attention of that audience. So it can’t realise that value.

Why can’t a brand publish?

Publishers have usually been very careful to separate advertising from editorial. And many brands have been hesitant to be vocal on anything but their product, as it risks alienating part of their audience. But at the same time as self-designated “quality publishers” have been hit hard by falling revenues, lone bloggers, communities, and small online publishers have built up audiences quickly and inexpensively. And many brands should be asking themselves the question: “Why can’t we be a valid voice in our area of focus/expertise?” (See The Case for Digital Custom Publishing for a fuller look at the benefits).

The new publications that seem to be doing well in the current environment are adapting to the new business reality. They aggregate and syndicate lots of content in (see iMotorMag). They have good distribution systems (ShortList is partcularly impressive). They have small teams, leverage technology well, and are taking audience from newsrooms 10x their size. For an ever-decreasing investment, brands can, and in some cases are, doing the same thing. The question is, why push all promotional efforts through a publisher (proxy), relying on them for limited reporting and metrics, when you can own part of the audience yourself?

So what does brand publishing get you?

• An interested audience
• Longer engagement periods
• An ongoing and persistent relationship
• Detailed usage data
• A content footprint (helps search rankings)
• Pre-sale credibility before customers

I’m not suggesting that all brands start publishing expensive custom magazines. That can be a way for some premium brands, but publishing is moving forwards. Its more about hosting a conversation than churning out perfectly edited features. Here are three different approaches that can be adopted:

• Custom publishing

This is the most expensive option, and would usually be outsourced to a skilled custom publishing agency. Relentless Energy’s site is one of my favourites. Built for the energy drink owned by Coca Cola, it publishes very high quality video about extreme sports, music and culture, long form articles, blog posts, and custom software. This is a great way of marketing to a targeted audience, building the credibility of the brand within that tight knit community.

• Having a conversation

As far as I’m concerned, every brand should be producing content through blogs, tweets, flickr accounts etc on a scale that is relevant to their products, customers, and market. By not being afraid to express opinions, a brand can build personality and resonance with its audience. In addition this basic customer engagement is a transparant  and much-appreciated method of collecting and answering customer feedback. Lots of other people have blogged about relevant case studies, so I will just point to this nice review of 5 good examples – it includes a company that has every employee actively using twitter, a company that dropped its cost-per-lead dramatically through content creation, and a company that made $3m in revenue through twitter alone. Content marketing works.

• Curating and aggregating

This is a way by which many brands can simply and cost-effectively set up a destination or source of content. It follows the more interesting new publishing models, by taking the focus away from bespoke content creation, and placing it on curating streams of content that are interesting to the target audience. It might be in the form of a digg.com clone, or a forum, or an aggregation of relevant UGC video, or a feedreader preset with relevant content sources. These might not be high-brow “publications”, but they provide places for the target audience to gather around… if a) they are of enough value (interesting/funny/relevant etc) AND b) well distributed. The problem with the first round of attempts at digital custom publishing, ie “microsites”, was that they generally were not search-engine friendly, did not update often with new content, and required push advertising to build any audience at all. By creating something of value to the user, and building in a distribution strategy, these publications can stand on their own two legs now that the costs of releasing a new “microsite” can be so small. A great example is Skittles’ site which simply shows a Skittles navigation widget on top of the Twitter search page for the brand name. Another good example is VB Raw’s microsite, which aggregates content from social media sources which are relevant to their audience.

One final example is a personal favourite of mine: Federated Media and JC Penney teamed up last year to launch the Fall Shopping Guide, a collection of content from popular woman-focused blogs prominently sponsored by the retailer’s Chris Madden Collection. JC Penney didn’t have the rights to review or influence the content, and the bloggers did not have to mention the aggregation to their audiences. Traffic started to grow, from search as well as bookmarking sites and RSS readers. Not long after, the site, was ranked 5th on Google out of 13 million results for the popular term “fall shopping” and ranked 2nd for “fall shopping guide”. See here for the aggregation (now without JC Penney branding), and here for more info.

Also worth reading on this topic are these posts on how publishers could react to this ” invasion” of their market:

How Publishers Are Dealing With The “Advertiser-Owned Properties” Threat

What to do when brands become publishers

For consumers, display advertising is a necessary evil, ignored or blocked at every opportunity. The most interruptive formats have received considerable backlash from users, and in most cases the less interruptive formats are just background noise on the page.

For publishers, things also do not look so good. CPMs are declining, as available inventory rises. The huge inventories of the major social networks have contributed to an overall depression in achievable CPMs, as supply simply outstrips demand. When unable to sell directly to brands, publishers achieve fractions of a dollar per thousand views, via the large advertising networks that deal in mass-volume remant inventory.

It is certainly not all doom and gloom however. Countless companies are still experimenting with contextual and behavioural targeting technology, which generally demonstrate improved click-through rates. Improved formats, including those that integrate with conversations on social networks (Social Media is leading the space here) are likely to prove more enticing to consumers. However the biggest trend, is that of sponsored content (sometimes called branded content). This ranges from the much-maligned “pay-per-post” approach, which blurs the boundaries of advertising and editorial by paying for coverage without requiring clear disclosure, to the creation of valuable content (especially research, video, and announcements) on behalf of, or by brands, for disclosed insertion into media properties.

From the metrics I have seen, on our sites and others, it really works. If properly disclosed, branded content can be valuable to the reader, effective for the advertiser, and can produce a lot more revenue than standard banners for the publisher. The resistance is that it takes a lot more thought, and often significant technical integration. Here are a few good examples of sponsored content:

Daily Beast

The Daily Beast, a very popular aggregator and curator of news, has started moving its brand messaging from the confines of ad boxes, and mixing it more closely with content. You can see the range of formats on offer here, which range from large rich-media units, to full sponsored stories like this one.

idiomag

On idiomag we run sponsored content, which can range from viral videos, to sponsored artist profiles, to full flash games. This article and video by Ford highlights the street art of Banksy et al around the East End of London, and then links off to an edgy campaign for the new Ford Ka, which includes a 3D mobile app. Formats like this on idiomag regularly achieve click-through rates around 5% (which is pretty impressive given that display advertising usually returns a CTR of around .25%.

Digg

Digg have just started trialling their new advertising format – allowing brands to pay to promote stories on the Digg homepage (more details here). It works a little like Google’s AdWords, with the more popular sponsored stories costing the advertiser less. Although the Digg community is notoriously resistent to advertising, this looks like it will really fly as it finds a good balance between the necessity of brand involvement, and giving the community power.

Gawker

The VP of popular blog network Gawker was recently quoted on saying that in a few years time sponsored posts will bring in “the majority of our advertising revenue.” The network has just started running posts about the HBO vampire series True Blood (see an example here). The issue is that their sales department thought that the topic of vampires would allow them to be “looser with the disclosure and create a little disbelief” – in other words, there is no disclosure that the content is sponsored. This has obviously caused some concern, although interestingly not so much from readers.