Category: Commentary

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 4/13

It’s Friday! Last night we hosted our second content dinner of the year. Thank you to all who came along. With a content studio bias in attendance, some observations; Everyone has a content studio at this point. Cheaper ‘viral’ sites can be distracting advertisers from real value. Brands aren’t adopting long term programmes as much as they should. This offsets setup cost but also allows for experimentation. The value chain from advertiser through publisher are stretched /= everyone needs… Continue reading

Ben Young

April 13, 2018

Commentary

How to squeeze more juice from the lemon

A post on maximizing every dollar of your content investments Nothing irritates me more than wasting time or money. Hence – Nudge. In 2017 Nudge measured 1000+ campaigns, each involving a different brand and content creator, which gives us a unique view into what delivers results and what does not. These are some tactics informed by data and supplemented by my own observations on how marketers can extract more value from the campaigns they’ve invested in. Continue reading

Ben Young

April 11, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 4/6

I’m back from a brief break. The Facebook narrative has continued (with not much really changing – just more of the same). Following Firefox’s cue, we have paused our Facebook ads – and actually been delighted with the performance on alternatives (Twitter/Google). I’m sure plenty of marketers are doing this right now. Also, I liked this from Recode, here’s who owns everything in big media today. Notable stories this week… Continue reading

Ben Young

April 6, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 3/23

Not the best week for Cambridge Analytica huh? A great outcome of all of this, is a framework for privacy moving forward. And maybe better crisis PR for tech companies. For some light hearted perspectives during the week follow @marketoonist. This week I caught on my Apple TV, in the Prime Now app, a piece of branded content for Far Cry (yes I do indulge in a little gaming). Amazon targeted prior purchasers, with content… Continue reading

Ben Young

March 23, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 3/16

I thoroughly enjoyed the Slade and BuzzFeed pieces, give them a read, or a save for later. ALSO, Nudge is making a strategist available, for those who need some help, starting, growing or being smarter with content investments. Email Gustaf for more info. Notable stories this week SnapChat approves branded content ads for publishers. Related, each SnapChat update attracts new users. BuzzFeed’s Jonah… Continue reading

Ben Young

March 16, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 3/9

I loved this from the Native Advertising Institute, 100 women leaders in native advertising. This week is pretty punchy, with a few datapoints of note. Recently I have broadened some of the stories (i.e. this week, Funny or Die swapping platforms to Vox). The reason is to provide more context on the drivers of change that are impacting native. The market is figuring out who the leaders are, the growth pains are painful for those in… Continue reading

Ben Young

March 9, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 3/2

It’s March! This year is zipping by too fast. Last week, we did a Periscope chatting through This Week in Native, would love your feedback if you caught it. Our own Ari Levine was at the ANA this week, Marc Pritchard opened with a succinct summary: “As we all chased the Holy Grail of digital, self-included, we were relinquishing too much control—blinded by shiny objects, overwhelmed by big data, and… Continue reading

Ben Young

March 2, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 2/23

It has been the week of everyone re-evaluating their platform strategies. The hub & spoke model is tried and true, whereby you use the platforms as outposts, but always draw back to your owned assets. This is as true now, as it was 10 years ago in digital. I did some early modeling on this (ages ago!) on whether you should provide full RSS feeds of your posts, or just the titles. The takeaway was that by distributing… Continue reading

Ben Young

February 23, 2018

This Week in Native Ads

This Week in Native Ads 2/16

Keith Weed opened the week saying Unilever will divest from platforms that don’t combat divisive content. He quickly clarified that wasn’t quite the case. But shots fired – point made. What I do like, is that this is getting brands to think about alternative platforms, and there are some great solutions in market. This week FlipBoard have been putting their hand up. Notable stories this week… Continue reading

Ben Young

February 16, 2018

Commentary

How Variety’s Content Studio Created Exceptional Valentine’s Day Content

  It’s Valentine’s Day and what better way to celebrate the fact than with some top notch content by a leading content studio?   Last year, Variety’s talented in-house content team produced an exceptional campaign together with Focus Features called “The Marriage that Changed the World”. The objective was to raise awareness, engage the film voting audience and collect as many awards nominations & wins for Focus Features’ film, “Loving”.   Native content gave… Continue reading

Gustaf Stenlund

February 13, 2018