“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Catherine Oddenino, Analyst, AdExchanger Research.
With the heat around content marketing and native ad formats, it’s hard to escape the feeling that advertising has come full circle.
Prior to joining AdExchanger Research last week as an analyst, I worked as a consultant on product development, content licensing and online marketing, among other areas. My clients ranged from large consumer packaged goods companies to small digital startups.
In my early days working in strategy at Turner, one of my focus areas was branded entertainment. Pricing for these long-form content initiatives was primarily determined by time on screen and GRPs. Then, as now, it was difficult to assess the value that a piece of content marketing generated for an advertiser, or how well it drove a brand’s business objectives.
Today, traditional branded programming shares the spotlight with – and indeed, has been eclipsed by – many flavors of native ads in digital and mobile environments. And, this being the Internet, we have lots of data that purport to tell us the value of placements. But it’s still a challenge to assess effectiveness and determine which portion of the customer lifecycle a program supports.
In addition to managing value for brands, publishers also need to make sure readers’ trust remains one of their top priorities. Time Inc., where I worked for 5 years, uses the editorial guidelines from the American Society of Magazine Editors for both their print and online publications, but during my time there, we lost many digital buys because we weren’t able to be as aggressive with sponsored content integration as our competitors. It’s a delicate balance.
In my new role, in addition to delving into content marketing issues, I’ll also look at how consumer-facing technology like mobile and video affects your marketing efforts, as well as how advertising and marketing technology can help make your strategies more complete and your execution more efficient. It’s an especially interesting time to be covering ad technology as programs move from pixel-based to people-based strategies.
The AdExchanger team has offered me such a warm welcome; I hope the AdExchanger audience will do the same. I’m looking forward to hearing from you and working to help make your marketing programs more effective.
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