Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In preparation for one of CMI’s upcoming reports, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with a number of companies that are in what’s being called the “native advertising” space. Through this experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that, while the technique can potentially create significant value, native advertising is actually neither “native” nor “advertising.” It is simply one aspect of the larger discipline we know of as branded content marketing.

Native by any other name

According to Wikipedia (which I chose not because of, you know, Wikipedia, but because it seemed to be the only place offering one up), native advertising is defined as:

“…a method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing valuable content in the context of the user’s experience. Native ad formats match both the form and the function of the user experience in which it is placed.”

In short, native advertising takes content and places it in the context of a publisher’s site. So, whether you think of it as an advertorial, a paid guest post, a sponsored tweet, or just a really extensive ad, it’s basically paying for your engaging branded content to have a prominent and contextual place on somebody else’s platform.

I'm always fascinated by organizations that embrace brand journalism, hiring reporters to create content that serves as marketing and public relations. For almost a decade, I've recommended that companies of all kinds model their sites not on their peers' boring old brochure-like approach but rather aspire to becoming like a media site such as Forbes, the BBC, or The New York Times and that they actually hire reporters and editors, not marketers and copywriters, to produce the content.

One look at the Raytheon homepage shows they do exactly that. There are real-time news, images, and a top stories section. And Raytheon is a B2B (and B2G) company! "You can see our homepage is very much a news operation," says Corinne J Kovalsky, Director, Digital & Social Media at Raytheon. "We've got feature stories and trend stories about cool products."...

Marketing forecast? Sunny with a chance of burritos...

Who said content marketing isn’t fun? A recent Adweek story looked at three companies, including Taco Bell, who are buying real-time, mobile ads based on the weather.

Twitter and The Weather Channel were quick to recognize the growing revenue possibilities in mobile marketing. They announced a deal to create custom content based on the weather and sell it to eager marketers....