Blog
Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.
We saw the surprising stat, 68% of publishers using editorial staff to create native, I’ve yet to dig in to this – but haven’t seen this first hand. Typically editorial have shifted across. But it does touch on a good point, if you’re a smaller publisher – how do you resource your native team. Keen to hear your thoughts, outsource? Partner? Client writes it? Otherwise check out the LinkedIn story – leveraging b2b data for native ads in the… Continue reading
The hot story this week is Facebook’s public stance on blocking ad blockers, launching a unblockable format… only to be re-blocked by AdBlock Plus days later… I think we’re only seeing the beginning of this story. -Ben Campaign of the Week: The Secret Life of a Long Island Military Installation Source: Atlas Obscura Why we like it: Stranger Things is the Netflix show blowing up – and this partnership with Atlas Obscura… Continue reading
This week we included a head to head of Facebook vs Twitter, identifying which of the two drives the highest quality traffic to your content – I won’t spoil that scroll down to see. Branded content outperforming pre-roll isn’t a huge surprise but good ammo to have in your arsenal and finally the latest trust study looks at the text link ads. Come on guys! If it’s an ad you have to disclose it – end of story. -Ben… Continue reading
Campaign of the Week: Defy Hunger Together Source: Wall Street Journal Why we like it: Together with the WSJ, Mini is going on a journey across America in support of Feed America, watch as they visit different communities and raise funds along the way. It’s an easy to grasp story with a public benefit and a different cadence to what you normally get on the WSJ. … Continue reading
Make the most of your native content investment by embracing these best practices. Make the brand integral This story couldn’t exist without the brand being present, it should feel natural for the end consumer to make the connection to the brand. A great example of this is a collaboration between Puma and Refinery29. Read our write up here. Content Length Half the battle is getting attention, once someone has decided to click on your content, look to hold it. Continue reading
Campaign of the Week: Digital Innovation and the Future of Flight Source: Business Insider Why we like it: This piece of sponsored content by GE is a custom article including insights on the challenges and opportunities facing the aviation industry. Taking a dense subject Business Insider have created a long form piece of content that feels snackable and easy to digest. Also with a… Continue reading
1) Load time is life and death If your content doesn’t load fast you lose the user. This is an invisible tax you’re already paying but not realising. Slow load time can result in as high as 50% drop off in people intending to read your content and actually doing that. 2) People scroll slower On desktop people can skim a lot easier and scroll a lot faster. On mobile we find people scroll a lot slower. Less fluff more… Continue reading
Campaign of the Week: South London Hosted By Artwork Source: Hosted By Why we like it: Solid example of native content done right, helps you explore South London and get a sense of what’s going on – why you’d like it. To fully experience it you can book an AirBNB. Quote of the Week: [The thing holding native… Continue reading
Campaign of the Week: Journey to the Hop Source: The Weather Channel Why we like it: It’s stinking hot right now and the Weather.com execution with Goose Island is perfect timing. Hot weather and refreshing beverage. This piece goes into how weather impacts the production of hops in their beers. Well timed and integrated. Quotes of the Week:… Continue reading
Campaign of the Week: Designing Buildings that Learn Source: IBM Why we like it: For IBM Watson the article series brings to life the potential of Watson & Internet of Things. The content is produced and distributed by Wired Band Lab but housed on the IBM site, despite the interface being a bit clunky the content is good and has nice calls to action… Continue reading