Tag: branded content

Instagram Adds New Share And Chat Features

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram introduced Instagram Direct at the end of 2013 to allow users to send private posts to each other, but the feature’s isolated placement within the app has hindered its adoption. Now with the newest update, Instagram finally overhauled the feature to give it a more “messaging-friendly” layout and allow user to share photos, locations, and even user profiles with selected friends straight from the news feed.  Previously, users had to manually input their friend’s profile handle in comments in order to share content.

What Brands Should Do
Instagram has been growing popular among brands and advertisers, thanks to its inherently visual nature and unique aesthetics. And this new makeover of Instagram Direct, which aims to facilitate easier content discovery and sharing, could lead to a higher organic exposure for branded content, with potential to go viral. Therefore, brands that are active on Instagram would be wise to take advantage of this new feature and start encouraging content sharing.

 

Source: The Verge

GoPro To License Stock Video Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened:

GoPro continues its transition from a camera manufacturer to a media brand with the launch of its GoPro Licensing content platform, which grants marketers and brands alike access to high-quality videos produced by GoPro, professional athletes, and GoPro users, with licensing fees starting at $1,000 apiece.

What Brands Should Do:

For brands seeking video content for promotional or marketing purposes, but lacking the resources to actually produce the content themselves, this new platform offered by GoPro could provide a nice shortcut for quality stock video content. Moreover, brands also can learn a thing or two from GoPro’s ongoing transition and try to monetize the user-generated-content to increase revenue as well as to elevate brand equity.

Source: TechCrunch

Blurred Lines: Creating Content That Works

Posted on by Lab Team

Click to download YouTube Insights here.

Finding the best way to communicate with your target consumer is one part art and one part science. As an emphasis on cross-screen viewing and digital has become a core part of brand communications, the lines between ads and content have blurred. Google and IPG Media Lab partnered to understand consumer perceptions and effectiveness of branded content and video advertising.

To learn more, download and view the YouTube Insights here.

 

Instagram Wants Brands To Know Its Ads Work

Posted on by Lab Team

Instagram is trying to prove itself as a legitimate ad platform by announcing three new marketing tools for brands: two analytic tools named Account Insights and Ad Insights, along with a collaboration platform dubbed Ad Staging. All three features are expected to roll out “over the coming weeks and months”. At the moment, advertising on Instagram is still quite limited in scale, but Facebook, which owns Instagram, clearly has big plans for the platform previously known for its filters and selfies.

Why Twitter Tweaked Your Timeline

Posted on by Lab Team

Compared to Facebook’s ever-evolving algorithm-curated newfeed, Twitter’s timeline has been simple and linear: only tweets and retweets from the accounts you follow, organized in a strict reverse-chronological order. This distinction has become quite obvious in the current news cycle, with Ferguson news dominating Twitter chatter and ALS Ice Bucket Challenge taking over Facebook.

This difference is about to be erased with Twitter indicating it will add “popular or relevant content” to the constitution of timeline. This marks Twitter’s aim to gain more control on the content flow. While users may remain skeptical of such a shake-up, advertisers would no doubt welcome Twitter’s newest tweak, as it offers more freedom for branded tweets to filter through.

How Puma Is Using Twitter’s New “Flock To Unlock” Feature

Posted on by Lab Team

Twitter has added a new feature to its multimedia ad platform “Cards,” and Puma just became the first brand to try it. The newly introduced “Flock to Unlock” feature enables marketers to reward followers with branded content that is unlocked by tweeting. Progress towards the goal is shown as a percentage graph rather than a specific number. 

Puma is testing this new feature with their “Faster Forever” campaign that encourages fans to tweet at the sportswear brand to unlock its new ad spot 2 days prior to its TV debut. The reaction so far has been lukewarm, possibly due to the lack of a true incentive. Rewards that are either beneficial (like coupon codes) or enticing (like exclusive content) would be better suited. Nevertheless, “Flock to Unlock” opens up a new way to facilitate interaction between brands and their fans on social media.

Weinstein Co. Turns To Kik To Reach Gen Z Audience

Posted on by Lab Team

In an attempt to reach the fickle and ever-elusive Generation Z, Weinstein Company is teaming up with messaging app Kik to launch an ad campaign for its upcoming young adult movie “The Giver”. Kik users are now encouraged to share a “Giver card”, embedded with promo content of the movie, with each other in conversations within the app. This marks the first time the messaging platform running a movie promotion, although it is certainly no stranger to brand campaigns, having worked with IPG lab last year to run an integrated campaign for U.K boyband One Direction. With a major Hollywood studio moving in, Kik and other messaging apps are indeed shaping up to be the next frontier of youth marketing.

Native Ads On Upworthy Outperform Editorials

Posted on by Lab Team

As a nascent category, native advertising is still a territory most publishers and brands are struggling to map out. So it comes as a surprise when Upworthy, which just announced its entry back in April, reports that they have figured out the secret of effective native ads. The viral site claims that its branded content, from sponsors like Unilever, Skype and CoverGirl, have outperformed its regular posts. Besides the caveat that native ads typically receive more promotion from publishers, sources contribute this usual success to Upworthy’s specifically sharable, viral-worthy content and the comparatively high amount of effort poured into the creation of its native ads. However, given the site’s narrow topical focus that restricts it to only advertise with brands that meet its social good standards, this success story is very unlikely to be applied to every brand.

Upworthy Announces Plans For ‘Sponsored Curation’

Posted on by Lab Team

Branded content and native ads are nothing new, but Upworthy’s announcement of sponsored curation presents an interesting opportunity for cause marketing and social responsibility initiatives. The viral content network is planning Upworthy Collaborations which let brands deliver promoted posts, sponsored content curation around key themes and content consultation.  Their first collaboration has been Unilever’s Project Sunlight which has curated a section of articles around sustainability efforts. There will certainly be plenty of eager brands looking for these custom opportunities but how will Upworthy revenue compare with a traditional display model?

Contently Raises $9 Million

Posted on by Lab Team

Content marketing platform, Contently raised 9 million to empower brands as publishers. The self-service model connects writers with agencies and publishers to produce brand content whether they be white papers, sponsored articles or blog entries. While the industry seems to be shifting towards programmatic, there is also equal interest in custom, native experiences, putting Contently in a sweet spot. The Lab conducted some research on branded content on behalf of Forbes last year that found it to be most successful on publisher sites opposed to the brand’s own channels.