Tag: branded content

Publishers Can Now Publish Branded Content On Facebook

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
If you get your news from Facebook, you are about to see a lot more brand-sponsored content. On Friday, Facebook announced it is loosening its rules on branded content, allowing publishers to post branded content in all formats, including video, as long as media companies and marketers go through a simple verification process. Previously, publishers were technically prohibited from posting advertorial content as organic posts on Facebook unless they are part of a paid ad placement, despite some publishers’ attempts to sneak them through.

The announcement comes at a time when publishers are increasingly turning to branded content to supplement ad revenues. For example, earlier this week, The Economist started pitching brand advertisers sponsored mini-documentaries as a new ad unit for brands to attach themselves to the social and environmental causes they care about.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook recently reported that 83% of the ads running on its Audience Network are now native ads. We expect more to pop up now that Facebook has opened the gates for branded content. With consumers continuing to shun away from traditional ads, it is important for brands and media owners to try engaging with their audience in new ways, such as branded content and native ads.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

For more updates on Facebook, Remember to check back next week to read our in-depth take on Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference.

 

Source: WSj

Cadillac Partners With Emerging Fashion Designers To Elevate Its Brand

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Cadillac is teaming up with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) on a Retail Lab initiative that aims to foster young fashion talent. The Retail Lab will have a custom retail shop on the ground floor of the Cadillac building, where up-and-coming designers can showcase their latest work and receive mentorship in marketing and business development. As part of its rebranding efforts following decades of declining sales, Cadillac relocated its headquarters from Detroit to New York City in early 2015.

What Brands Need To Do
By working closely with the CFDA, Cadillac is integrating its brand into the glamorous fashion scene and trying to develop a halo effect that can help the luxury automaker elevate its brand. At a time when consumers are growing tired of being bombarded with ads and starting to actively avoid ads with the help of ad-blockers and ad-free subscription services, it is important for brands to try out new ways to reach their target audiences. Cadillac’s new initiative provides a good example of how a brand can enhance its brand equity and unlock a new audience by associating itself with a compatible cause, in this case prompting consumers to make the connection between stylish designer clothes and stylish luxury cars.

 

Source: Digiday

Branded Content and Customizable Ads Coming To Snapchat

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat made two moves this week to ramp up its ad efforts. On Wednesday, the popular photo messaging app started testing a new ad product that allows brand advertisers to attach branded articles containing text, images, and GIFs to their video ads in Live Stories and Discover channels. AT&T appears to be the first brand to try out this new product with a listicle of GIFs to promote its mobile live-streams for NCAA games. Earlier this week, Snapchat also updated its privacy policy to allow for ad targeting. Under the revised privacy policy, the Los Angeles-based company will be able to use customer data to customize ads going forward, increasing its capabilities for brand advertisers and catching up with the other large social networks.

What Brands Need To Do
Snapchat has been working on improving its ad products for the past few months. In February, the company struck a deal with Nielsen to bring some much-needed transparency to its ads. As Snapchat continues to diversify its ad products, brands will have better tools at their disposal to effectively reach the coveted demographics of young Millennials and teens on the app.

 

Source: Marketing Land & Digiday

Native Ads Are Coming To Apple News

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple is dipping a toe into native advertising with a new format for sponsored posts in the next update for its Apple News app. With the new format, sponsored posts will “display directly in the content feed, in line with News articles” from a publisher’s feed and can link to an article in the News app. The new ad format will clearly label branded content in the app with a small “sponsored” tag, and Apple will keep 30% of the revenue. The Apple News app will be updated as part of the upcoming version of iOS, expected to be released next week as Apple announces new devices.

What Brands Need To Do
In January, Apple reported that 40 million people had used the Apple News app. Now, Apple is opening a way for brands to get in front of an audience that is increasingly shunning mobile ads and turning to the likes of Facebook’s Instant Articles or Apple News for a faster, leaner reading experience. Native ads remain a good way for brands to cope with this behavioral shift and reach their target audience.

To learn more about tailoring your ad content and format to the platform of choice, check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Engadget

Brands Get Another Tool To Publish Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following last week’s announcement of a plugin that automatically generates Instant Articles pages for WordPress sites, brands are getting another tool to publish their content with Facebook’s fast-loading program. Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to mobile publishing platform Steller, allowing all users, including brands, to use Steller’s app to create and distribute content on Facebook through Instant Articles.

What Brands Need To Do
Since its debut last May, Facebook has restricted access to Instant Articles to publishers only. Now with these two new tools, brands can easily publish content in Instant Articles without piggybacking on publishers’ content. As media consumption shifts toward mobile, it is crucial for brands to start using the tools available to optimize their digital content so as to deliver a leaner, faster user experience to mobile consumers.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Here Comes Nom, The Twitch For Food Shows

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Live-streaming platforms continue to diversify as Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, launched Nom, a livestreaming site for food shows. Similar to the way Twitch has enabled video gamers to broadcast themselves, Nom is aiming to provide a platform for anyone who loves to cook to showcase their culinary skills via live broadcasts and connect with others in the food community.

What Brands Need To Do
Following Facebook’s official launch of Live Video at the end of January, live-streaming has been in the media spotlight and getting brands interested in trying out this emerging medium. In fact, a recent research from Brandlive found that 44% of companies have created live video content in 2015. With the launch of Nom, QSRs, cooking equipment makers, and other food-related brands gain a great new channel that they can reach targeted audience with sponsorships and branded content.

To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT streaming platforms with branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Snapchat Expands Live Stories To The Web For The Oscars

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has always been mobile-only, in the sense that all its content and services live on mobile devices. But on Sunday, it broke with its tradition and extended its Live Stories for the Oscars to its website, so that people who are not using the popular messaging app can also watch its live content curation from the red carpet and ceremony. Just like Live Stories inside the app, the Oscars’ Live Story was only available online for 24 hours. But Snapchat says it is considering making more Live Stories for big events accessible via its website.

What Brands Need To Do
Making its content more accessible will no doubt help Snapchat amplify its content viewership and reach new audiences outside the app. For brands advertising on Snapchat, such increased visibility should come as a welcome development. Snapchat has been making an effort recently to appeal to brand advertisers, including the debut of on-demand custom Geofilters and a new partnership with Nielsen to improve its ad measurement, as well as enlisting Viacom’s help to sell more ads in its Discover content channels and Live Stories. As Snapchat continues to grow its audience and make its platform more brand-friendly, it remains a leading channel for brands to connect with today’s teen and young Millennial audiences.

 

Source: The Verge

Forbes Wants To Help Brands Connect With Industry Experts For Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Similar to so-called “influencer marketing,” where brands turn to social media stars to promote their products and services, Forbes is now offering brands a chance to connect with industry experts in certain areas to help brands get the word out for their content. Working with social media analytics firm Traackr, Forbes will connect brand advertisers participating in its BrandVoice Premium program to “a network of journalists, academics and bloggers who wield influence in key subject areas” to promote their content to a more targeted audience via their own social network. The expert influencers won’t be paid to promote the branded content, but Forbes can ask these influencers to create content on the brand’s behalf that would be posted on Forbes.com.

What Brands Need To Do
While Forbes’ BrandVoice initiative comes with a rather hefty threshold of at least $100k ad spending per month for a minimum of six months, it nevertheless illustrates the growing importance of leveraging social influencers to get branded content in front of the right audience. At a time when 14% of internet users are now using ad-blockers to avoid online ads, it is especially important for brands to use branded content to spread the word.

For more information on why brands should leverage partnerships with social influencers and content creators to reach new audiences, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Sources: Wall Street Journal

Snapchat Launches On-Demand DIY Geofilters For Everyone

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has opened up its location-based Geofilters for everyone, as it continues to explore revenue streams. Now any Snapchat user can design their own Geofilter, set the availability of time and location, and submit it for review. The turnaround time for review is about a day, and pricing starts at $5 and goes up based on the allocated time (as few as half an hour) and space covered (starting at  5,000 square feet).

What Brands Need To Do
In the age of ad avoidance (more on this in our Outlook 2016), branded Geofilters offer a great tool to get your brand seen via user-generated social content. Last July, McDonald’s became the first brand to create a branded Snapchat Geofilter for its stores. Now with DIY Geofilters widely available, brands can easily set up their own branded Geofilters to promote stores and special events, and experiment with different designs to find the best way to engage young consumers on Snapchat.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Two New Tools To Help Brands Build Their Own Apple TV Apps

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The launch of the new Apple TV created a new channel for brands to reach consumers in their living rooms with content marketing. Now, two companies have come out with tools to help brands build their own OTT streaming portals. Earlier today, video distribution platform VHX opened its API to let developers create their own streaming apps for Apple TV or Roku set-top boxes.

Similarly, brands hosting video content on JW Player’s platform will be able to use its newly released open-source tvOS app framework to create their own version of Netflix with ease, which Tasting Table, a food website, used to build and submit an Apple TV app for review in less than 24 hours.

What Brands Need To Do
As consumer eyeballs shift away from a rigid programming grid to time-shifted viewing due to the increasing availability and variety of streaming content, there are new opportunities for brands to reach consumers with branded content, which can live alongside traditional media content and is equally discoverable through universal search on advanced TV interfaces. Therefore, brands with video content would be smart to use the new tools available to create their own content portal apps for streaming platforms.

To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT platforms with branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Sources: The Next Web & 9to5 Mac