Trends In Content Marketing

It’s been a big year for content marketing. The traditional four-legged model of paid, earned, owned and shared media continues to hold weight in the marketing world, but increased efficacy of media that is both paid and owned has dramatically shifted the conversation. As we enter the last few months of 2014, let’s look at a few trends in one of the most buzzed-about business phrases of the year.

Traditional outlets are becoming more like agencies
Traditional news and content platforms (think Wall Street Journal and the New York Times) are increasingly creating their own in-house agencies, or “content studios,” to produce highly aligned branded content, while agencies are shifting in the opposite direction, modeling out near-newsrooms and editorial structures that mirror how we traditionally think about the news and content world. What we’re witnessing: a veritable role-reversal and potentially the future of news.

Leveraging established distribution platforms and in-house skill-sets, custom content studios — which bring ad development into the old school publishing world and away from agencies and brands — have evolved as a way to generate revenue in an aging industry by creating a “native” experience that more closely aligns brands with the platform on which they advertise. WSJ Custom Studios, HuffPost Partner Studio and the New York Times Content Studio, launched in January, are all examples of old-guard outlets that have evolved and repurposed their storytelling abilities in a new context.

Agencies are becoming more like newsrooms
On the flip side, marketers are increasingly seeing the value of dedicating dollars and manpower to content strategy and generation. In his report in Forbes on the “Top 7 Content Marketing Trends Dominating 2014,” Jason DeMers, commenting on the Content Marketing Institute’s 2014 B2B Content Marketing report, writes that 93% of marketers now include content in their overall marketing strategies. Further, data shows that those companies with a formalized strategy and a dedicated person to implement it — the increasingly relevant Director of Content role (no bias here) — are far more likely to consider their efforts a success.

Perhaps most telling? The rise in content writing services (such as Content Equals Money, as noted by DeMers) and dedicated staffing structures within agencies that include editors-in-chief, beat reporters and all the people required to produce a well-researched, well-written story…albeit this time at the behest of a particular brand.

Promoted content is succeeding
As reported by Nathalie Tadena in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times executive vice president of advertising Meredith Levien said as recently as May that readers are “spending roughly the same amount of time on advertiser-sponsored posts as on news stories,” and that in some cases these sponsored stories outperformed even “traditional” content. As Levien put it, “Brands are storytellers and they’re going to tell stories that are tied to what’s happening in the news,” and the Times is “not just selling them audience or context but also sharing our storytelling tools and standards.” What this means: Ads are getting interesting — and maybe even informative and entertaining.

Scrutiny — and the importance of transparency — is on the rise
With success comes caution. As it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between paid-for and straight editorial coverage, the Federal Trade Commission has shown increased interest in guidelines and labeling practices — and brands will be well-advised to maintain transparency in their efforts. With native content performing well, there shouldn’t be the need to cloak it as something it’s not…especially when the outcome can only mean hefty fines and consumer distrust.

As Trevor Fellows, head of global media sales at the Wall Street Journal, put it in Digiday: “I think people are being disingenuous when they call [their content studios] ‘newsrooms’…calling it a newsroom or calling it anything that blurs that line is a mistake.” The bottom line? Honesty is always the answer. Isn’t that the key for a good journalist — sponsored or not — anyway?