Forbes Keeps Banking on Sponsored Content

Oracle BrandVoice Ad on Forbes.com

In class, we discussed Forbes.com's annoying video ads you have to skip before you can access the site. Well, it turns out there's another method of advertising Forbes uses as well. Since 2010, Forbes has offered advertisers the ability to publish their stories directly on the magazine's website. Initially called AdVoice, the program now known as BrandVoice, accounts for 20% of ad revenue.

The sponsored BrandVoice content is designed to look like the site's own editorial content. While some argue that this form of native advertising blurs the lines between the ad/edit wall, Forbes does publish a disclosure at the bottom of the articles that says "ForbesBrandVoice" and "What's this?" with a link to more information on the program. While this type of advertising is now common across the web, Forbes remains one of the only legacy publishers to employ these tactics, and it seems to be working. Revenues at Forbes from digital advertising surpassed print ad revenue for the first time this year, accounting for 53% of all ad revenue.

According to Adage, we should expect to see this ad strategy in the future from other legacy sites as well. The architect of the original program, Kevin Gentzel, is now at the Washington Post where he introduced a similar program called BrandConnect. Additionally, his successor at Forbes as Chief Revenue Officer, Meredith Levien Kopick, just joined The New York Times in August and it's widely suspected she will introduced some sort of sponsored content there.

Looks like readers will need to get used to reading more from their favorite brands.