Friday, October 24, 2014

The Growth of Custom Advertising

In a recent article on AdExchanger entitled "Digital Publishers Push Custom Advertising Ahead of Display", Sarah Sluis discusses how companies are focusing an increasing amount of their advertising dollars on custom or native ad campaigns. While display ads and programmatic buying still exist and present value, publishers are seeing an increasing amount of value in leveraging social media and their in-house content teams to develop custom offerings like games, sponsorships and custom creatives. Companies and publishers believe that both traditional and custom media should be leveraged to create a more effective campaign. In developing custom content and leveraging social networks, companies are going beyond paid media to push/create their own earned media.

The results from such efforts are promising. GE ran a year-long campaign with The Economist in which they leveraged social media, video, PR and distribution networks. In addition to the traditional paid media, these efforts brought them significant numbers in terms of earned media. The campaign delivered 1.5 million interactions, 14k social shares, 49.9 million ad impressions and 7.7 million uniques. Overall, GE brand awareness increased 10%.

As an intern at Spotify, I saw this type of custom advertising first-hand. The Branded Experiences team at Spotify works with advertisers to develop custom content both online and offline to increase brand awareness. The efforts range from custom playlists & display advertising to concert series and events. Beyond the traditional advertising associated with these events, the custom nature and unique quality generates significant earned media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) resulting in increased brand awareness. As companies struggle to find effective ways to target consumers, I believe that the custom advertising segment will only continue to grow as it seems to increasingly be the best way to generate engagement and awareness while driving more out of limited ad dollars. 

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