Home Breadcrumb Blog

Blog

Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.

The Nudge Dashboard
The Nudge Dashboard

Nudge, a content marketing analytics & attribution dashboard

Nudge at its core is a marketing analytics platform to give you more visibility into what is performing. Because content has become the cornerstones or backbone of marketing today, that is where we have focused. And each year it continues to change. As we do too. As company or culture, we are very pragmatic, work within the constraints we as marketers have, to help deliver the best clarity. Then leverage technology to generate smarter insights. An example is our Insights… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 11, 2019
tv ad spend the lowest its been since 2015
tv ad spend the lowest its been since 2015

This Week in Native Ads 12/6

Next week I’m hosting some drinks for smart folks in the sports media industry. LMK if you’d like to join us. Informal, small group. I shared my top books of 2019, what were yours? One big thing The Columbia Journalism school has been undertaking a multi-year study on the relationship between large-scale technology companies and journalism. In their latest update, they summarize the present state of affairs. A couple of takeaways: How publishers use the… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 6, 2019

This Week in Native Ads 11/15

One big thing The streaming wars have dominated stories this week – with the launch of Disney +. And what an incredible launch, 10m subs after 24 hours. The story I really paid attention to was the Cadbury Amazon Fire TV partnership. Cadbury curated a selection of BuzzFeed's Tasty recipe videos to show on Fire TV. It’s yet another blueprint for how brands are using content, as the traceable commodity between all media. My take… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 15, 2019
Visual showcasing what elements that define branded content
Visual showcasing what elements that define branded content

Guide to Branded Content

Branded content is content created for a brand by a third party, to live on their site. The key elements of branded content are: A third party hosting the content. Disclosure. Because this content has been made to fit the form and aesthetic of the third party, it also makes it endemic to, or native content to that platform. Other terms used for branded content are; sponsored content, influencer content, paid content, custom content and even native content. Often this… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 11, 2019
spotify-video
spotify-video

This Week in Native Ads 11/8

Pleased to announce the youngest young joined the family last week, thanks for the notes. We’re back to normal albeit with less sleep. ? This week is jam-packed, so save a few links, keep an eye on commentary from Darren Herman and datapoints of note. Oh and LinkedIn launched a newsletter tool? One big thing The piece that I dug the most this week is the Spotify tapping Viacom for content marketing on DigiDay. And for a number of… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 8, 2019
Content marketing tools
Content marketing tools

Content marketing tools [continuously updated]

Content marketing continues to evolve and so do the tools which help power it. There truly are many talented people, building little tools and apps but also platforms. Here we’ve compiled a list to help navigate. A couple of sites as useful resources are UseFI and ProductHunt. The former helps see what other brands have declared they use. And ProductHunt is where creators share their latest tools. So worth keeping an eye on what’s new. Here are our top tools:… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 6, 2019
How to articulate the ROI of your content
How to articulate the ROI of your content

Content Marketing ROI

In this post we establish what your content ROI is, how to calculate it and explain it to others. What is Content ROI? What the return on investment of content boils down to is this: does it deliver the business outcome that you require? Pretty simple. How do you define those outcomes? That’s the more tricky part. But it typically comes down to a few buckets, awareness, interest, desire and… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 1, 2019

This Week in Native Ads 11/1

Colin here. I’m filling in for Ben as he prepares for child number two. One big thing There’s starting to be a flood of brand interest onto TikTok. It is, put simply, one of the most interesting and creative spaces on the Internet right now. Not surprisingly, the platform is experimenting and is in the nascent stages of building out its ad and sponsorship products. Right now, it’s basically just an opening screen that a… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
November 1, 2019
first banner ad
first banner ad

This Week in Native Ads 10/25

One big thing The banner ad. For with it became immediately obvious that that internet could be a way to reach people. How? We put a sign on it. This week we celebrated the 25th year of the banner ad. That domino that created our industry is still falling. We liked RPA’s take. So what’s the domino happening right now? I think it’s the teleco going deep with mobile OTT partners, Quibi, Netflix, Peacock. What do… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 25, 2019
verizon
verizon

This Week in Native Ads 10/18

One big thing This week I caught the Carat webinar focused on 2020 and Attention. With the election and Olympics coming up it’ll be a big year, a hard one to A couple of points which To cut through, you need to be relevant and to be relevant you need good content. One TIL was that for political advertisers, they have to be careful with targeting – because the right message to the wrong audience, can actually drive donations… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 18, 2019