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Branded content is a powerful tool, and one that absolutely makes a difference. It has the power to break through barriers faced by traditional advertising and be valuable to audiences all over the globe. In a world fatigued by advertising models, branded content provides unique value.
Despite this, however, branded content isn’t a leading ad channel. In a world where big tech is dominating the market, and publishers are losing market shares and investment, branded content isn’t the direction that advertisers are turning to for success.
At the latest Native Advertising Institute webinar, we were fortunate to have Luke Spano, Founder and CEO of Avid Collective, addressing this exact issue as he explored the major barriers facing branded content.Bringing a thorough understanding of the publishing landscape of today and experience working with hundreds of publishers across thousands of branded campaigns, Luke is uniquely placed to understand the industry challenges. His insights are exceptionally valuable for anyone working within branded content, advertising or publishing.
Watch the full webinar here.
Branded content overcomes many of the challenges faced by traditional advertising
Traditional advertising is based on an intention to disrupt consumers and grasp their attention. While this is key for the message to be noticed, it also disrupts what the consumers were doing - whether that’s watching a tv program or scrolling a website - and this leads to a negative view of the advert, or even the brand as a whole:
- Attention: We’ve all used an advert break in a tv show to go and finish a chore, or skimmed over a printed ad without really considering it. Using branded content allows audiences to opt in, whether that’s by deliberately choosing to watch a branded recipe video, or reading a sponsored article from a specific publication.
- Trust: Advertisers are met with suspicion and seen as untrustworthy, as they are trying to sell something. Branded content provides advocacy from trusted voices, which can’t be bought and grounds trust in what is being communicated.
- Relevance: A major challenge for traditional ads is the lack of relevance - we’ve all seen ads pop up online and thought ‘why have I got that?’ Branded content audience choose to engage in topics that are relevant to them, providing both a better experience for the audience and better responses for the advertisers.
- Education: Ads are limited in the space they can take up and the information they can contain. One print page or poster display, for example, can only have a certain amount of information on it. Branded content does not have this issue, so can provide deep, educational information.
- Emotion: Many people have negative perceptions of ads, but branded content can transform this emotive response with strong storytelling. Storytelling uses emotions to connect the audience to the content, meaning that an emotional and powerful response results.
With the ability to overcome these issues, branded content should be a leading ad channel - yet it’s not. Despite the benefits, advertisers aren’t buying branded content.
The good news is that we can do something about this.
Watch the webinar to learn how.
Advertisers face five major barriers when buying branded content
In the webinar, Luke broke down the major issue behind the lack of branded content: accessibility.
To explain further: it’s difficult for advertisers to buy and for publishers to run campaigns. The barriers to selling, implementing and measuring branded content solutions are costing publishers millions. The commercialisation of the system is the problem - the need is to make it simpler and easier for advertisers to buy campaigns.
Luckily, for each of the major barriers to buying branded content, there are ways for the industry to overcome them, according to Luke. And they're simple to implement:
1. Fragmented markets
Fragmented markets make it difficult to understand where branded content should be placed, promoted, or even used. The way around this is to tailor offers to each ad category and make material like case studies and opportunities interactive. Where there is difficulty in exploring, retaining and comparing within the market, breaking down offerings for each category, including content type, industry, and target audience is a helpful way for fragmented markets to become a learning experience, rather than a barrier.
2. Complex buying processes
Branded content can be complex to buy, making it a challenge for advertisers to choose this rather than a model that they understand. There are often slow response times, inconsistent processes, and unclear executions. Communicating the content strategy in a way that can be understood by all involved parties helps avoid this issue. Using a content tactics framework ensures that the benefits are relevant and understandable.
To break this down practically, consider using the ‘why?’ of the content can inform the ‘how’, for example by creating a simple decision guide linking campaign goals to content type. If the aim of the content is to ensure trust, then a content tactic could be a brand story or an educative piece, whereas if the aim is to provide an emotive response, a consumer story is more likely to hit the spot. This removes some of the complexity in the buying process, as there is an understanding of what is being bought and why.
3. Resource-heavy execution
Branded content can be seen as a complex experience that requires a significant amount of collaboration, communication and follow up - which means misunderstandings are rife. However, the rise of task management and project management platforms offers a solution.
Streamlining collaboration is easier today than it ever was before, as there are a variety of platforms available to help with the manual minutiae that come alongside campaign execution. From briefing forms to timeline forecasts, content reviews to to do lists, there are solutions that streamline every part of the content process, from aligning teams at the beginning right through to structured feedback in one place. By utilising these, execution becomes much more simple and less of a task.
4. Limited reach and competitive scale
Content branding can be seen as having a limited reach. Particularly in relation to the amount of work and money that is put into it, it can be disappointing when a campaign receives minimal views. An excellent way to counteract this is by running the amplification through expert teams who are aware and up to date with the current landscape and know what is likely to gain the best reach in a given situation.
Approaches can then be customised by the expert team depending on the content strength and the industry. This specialised approach to content distribution is sure to have results - or a clear understanding of why there were not results and a plan for how to act in the future.
5. Insufficient measurement
It can be tricky to find the ROI data on a branded content campaign, especially when there is inconsistent reporting and inefficient measurement. Thankfully, this difficulty can be solved in a similar way to the above difficulties - by leveraging the correct platforms.
Integrating platforms saves time and speeds up processes, providing a clear overview of the campaign, including when it started, the time there is left, the phase, the article views, and many more elements. By having an immediate, clear overview of what is happening, measurement is clear and understandable, making it much more straightforward to measure campaign outcomes.
Branded content is an antidote for publishers, but it must be easier to manage
Even in a world where big tech is making gains, there is evidence of exhaustion in relation to their dominance - particularly when it comes to advertising. While branded content seems like a perfect solution, and in many ways offers superior results, it’s important to be smart when working with it.
Branded content isn’t a fix-all; it’s a solution that can be incredibly powerful when used strategically - and this goes far beyond the creatives to best practices for management, scaling, executing and buying. Branded content could transform the advertising industry, but the behind the scenes work must change for this to happen successfully. Making use of a simpler way to buy, sell, manage and measure branded content is vital for it to reach its potential.
Watch the full webinar here.
To learn more about managing branded content, see AvidCollective.com.
