Paid media has become essential to content marketing, as social media “war rooms” become commonplace and Facebook throttles the organic reach available through Page Posts.
In a new report, Forrester Research detailed a range of content marketing offerings, dividing the world into service- and software-based solutions. The report highlighted 15 agencies and 30 technology vendors, rating them according to whether they offer creation, Curation, collection, placement, discovery and paid media.
“Marketers who have committed to content marketing recognize that ‘organic’ discovery of their content (through organic search rankings or spontaneous social sharing) can be accelerated by putting some paid impetus to get that content in front of their customers,” said Forrester analyst and report co-author Ryan Skinner. “As a result, publishers – who are always on the lookout for a new payday – are responding by building and offering native advertising products that get branded content in front of readers.”
He added, “The biggest changes we’re seeing now are those driven by a rapidly expanding market: vendors adding as much functionality as they can to provide what might look like, from a marketers’ perspective, a complete marketing solution.”
On its content vendor landscape slide, Forrester identified 11 tool providers with paid media capabilities, including PaperShare, Visible Measures, ShareThrough, OneSpot and InPowered. Some offer native ads or content recommendation links (think Outbrain, Taboola, and nRelate) from directly within their platforms.
On the services side, Forrester profiled 15 agencies (among the hundreds that support content development and distribution). They included usual digital suspects such as 360i, Razorfish and DigitasLBi, along with some publisher-owned agency divisions like Time Inc. Content Solutions and Meredith Xcelerated Marketing.
