Lessons From Native Advertising and Branded Content: What Local TV Can Learn

Native and branded content have been around from the early days of radio and television. But now, in the digital age, these forms of messaging are undergoing an evolution that better adapts them to the sensibilities and behaviors of today’s consumers.

The recent Advertising Research Foundation’s (ARF) NativexScience conference revealed lessons from native advertising and branded content, and the value that television brings to the equation.

Native and Branded Are Different Advertising Forms

Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, native and branded content are actually quite different. According to Marc Rappin, chief marketing officer at the ARF, native advertising is a paid experience that looks like content. Because it is essentially assimilated into the design of the publisher, it is considered a more seamless experience for the viewer. It is not necessarily used for distribution purposes.

Branded content, on the other hand, is sponsored by the brand for general distribution purposes. The differences are subtle but important.

More Spending and a Move Into Programmatic

What is similar between the two forms of advertising is that they are becoming a bigger slice of the ad spending pie.....

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

The Art of Being Courageous. An Interview with Otto Bell

Otto Bell began his media career in the WPP fellowship program which spanned three years in three different jobs in three different countries, giving him a borderless view of the media landscape. 

Now as VP and Group Creative Director, Courageous, his responsibility is to create and manage a brand building studio that is the pipeline for native content for all of Turner’s properties across all possible platforms. This enormous effort, with currently forty projects completed since its official launch in June 2015, is, according to Bell, “growing at a fierce pace.” 

Located in Union Square in lower Manhattan, the Courageous enterprise currently boasts twenty full time employees from all media sectors and disciplines in a 12,000 square foot studio “We have 4k cameras, drones and cranes to create beautiful branded content,” explains Bell, “and employees with editorial backgrounds, Emmy and Morrow winning journalists from companies like Mashable, VICE and CNN, video producers, documentarians, storytellers, web designers and developers, etc, all in-house. We are fully self-sufficient and never outsource.” Courageous has hit an inflection point, Bell reports, to air fourteen programs currently in production from around the world. “And,” he adds, “We are currently shooting aerial VR in Pennsylvania.” Their productions are designed to be format agnostic with the ability to reside comfortably across any platform and media type. The question becomes, Bell says, “what is the right channel for the content we create? We find the unexplored angle for an advertiser’s traditional media buy.”

As part of its branded content effort, Courageous is producing a one day event called Human By Design, on August 3, 2016 at the Paley Center for Media in conjunction with client Square Enix to support the release of their video game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. “This video game is set thirty years into the future but these are present tense problems,” notes Bell. “There is human augmentation and mankind becomes divided between those who are augmented and improved with technology and others who are in an unadulterated state. Conflict ensues” and, he adds, “These issues are bubbling up today.” 

This event brings together leading minds to explore the current state of human augmentation, trying to answer the questions of how to police this brave new world, how technology is shaping the human condition and what does it mean to be human. The event is divided into three panels. Panel one is a discussion of whether augmentation is a human right. Panel two reviews selective versus therapeutic augmentation – that which corrects a disease like the insertion of a microchip for Parkinson’s disease or condition like being able to walk while paralyzed as compared to a technological augmentation for cosmetic purposes only. Panel three, titled, The Future of the Far Far Next, will delve into the future of human augmentation and how we will get there. One of the results of this conference will be to “publish a code of ethics, independent of the game and of CNN from this brain trust of luminaries” according to Bell.

For Jon Grant, Senior Manager, Product marketing for Square Enix, “Creating Human by Design in conjunction with CNN’s Courageous studio felt like the perfect fit for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Video games stretch the imagination, and lead people to think outside the box – a quality shared with those leading the bionics industry. This conference is a big step for everyone involved as we broaden the overall awareness of bionics for the science, sci-fi, and Deus Ex fans alike.”

As opposed to the uncertain, somewhat pessimistic future of humans vs technically augmented bots, the future for Courageous looks bright. “We approach branded content with a compass and not a map,” explains Bell, who adds, “and we will succeed as long as the work we do meets our clients’ objectives with surprising, additive ways with their audiences. We want to do more to add to the public conversation as well as the marketing objectives of the client. Branded content can be great content.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Mining Point of Purchase Intent. Q&A with Seth Bestertnik

Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik has found a way for companies to discover new customers on the web through targeted content. Conductor bills itself as web presence management which is not native advertising according to Besmertnik. The company advises advertisers on placing relevant content on sites that reach consumers at the “point of purchase intent”. So if I am in the market for a camera, an article on various camera lens might be of interest and useful in my purchase decision.  The recently released Conductor Searchlight™ platform transforms a brand's web presence in 'unpaid' channels, like organic search, content and social.

Besmertnik built his company from the ground up – from an idea in an apartment to, seven years later, over 150 employees. In this fascinating interview, he talks about native advertising, the impact of programmatic, industry silos, viewer intent and online content consumption as well as predictions on the media industry and the use of media platforms for children.

There are four videos in this interview:

Subject                                                 Length (in minutes)

Background and Conductor                        (5:59)

Example, Research                                     (6:34)

Personal Media Use                                    (2:51)
Predictions                                                  (5:48)

Charlene Weisler interviews Seth Besternik who talks about his background and his company Conductor in this 5:59 minute video:

CW: Your company helps to create content on behalf of advertisers. Is Conductor a form of native advertising?

SB: Conductor is not a form of native advertising at all. Native advertising has become effective in some ways because you have a found a way for companies to pay, once again, to get in front of consumers so they will click on your content. It is better than ads. People would rather click on a sponsored piece of content than they would a giant banner ad however people still prefer to click on organic content that is not paid for and as consumers get smarter things like native advertising become more transparent and they will realize that this is paid for and that this is not paid for. What Conductor is trying to do is when you are looking for something, when you have intent, when you go google and search for something, when you go to YouTube and you are looking for something, when you go to Pinterest and you are looking for something, when you are on your phone and you are looking for something we can help it so that our customers show up in the places where you can’t actually use money to buy advertising. An example is Canon. When someone is looking to buy a camera, they usually research things like “What is the best type of camera.” What Canon is trying to do is reach that consumer earlier in their buying process and we help them by looking at their current content and offering them insights into how to make it more effective. We also advise as to how our customers can improve their current websites.

Charlene Weisler interviews Conductor's Seth Besternik who gives some examples of research in this 6:34 minute video:

What is your personal media use? Seth Bestertnik explains his media habits to Charlene Weisler in this 2:51 minute video:

CW: What are your personal media habits?

SB: We haven’t seen any media really die. Some companies have decided to stop publishing magazines and just go online and for that particular company that might be a death. But if you go to any airport, there are plenty of magazines available and it brings a lot of value to people. For me as a consumer, I tend to spend a lot of time with my phone. I spend a lot of time on my desktop, my laptop. I watch minimal TV and when I do it is usually prerecorded like on Netflix or Amazon so I am not watching that many commercials. I watch commercials during the Superbowl or when there are other sports events on but I spend most time on my phone using apps. That is my biggest consumption of media.  Not a lot of magazines and I read my newspapers on the web.

CW: You have two young children. Do you allow them to have screen time?

SB: My family has minimal allowance on using any kind of tablets or phones. They love it – any time you put your phone away they will be the first to grab it. But we don’t let them use our phones or tablets and we let them watch very minimal, educational TV. There is lots of data that talks about how looking at phones up close for children during their early developmental years slows down their brain development. It is not as good as playing with Legos and doing things that are interactive. They also read lots of books. 

 

Seth Bestertnik looks forward and shares some predictions with Charlene Weisler in this 5:48 minute video:

CW: Give me a prediction about the media landscape in the next 5 years.

SB: The trend that we see now will continue to grow in that the web is going to consume 95% of people’s time with their exposures to the media and as part of that people are going to have stronger preferences and get smarter about what is good content, what is bad content, what are ads and what are not ads. So I think that the trend of consumers interacting with organic content over paid content will continue to grow and from a company’s perspective, I think that they will reorganize their marketing teams. Teams today are siloed – content creation, search, social teams all concentrating in specific area. They will reorganize around a common mission.

This article was first published in www.Mediapost.com