Tag: branded content

Branded Online Courses: The Next Big Thing In Content Marketing?

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
A Minneapolis-based startup The Big Know has scored 3 million in funding to help brands create sponsored online courses that consumers would willingly pay attention to. Launched late last year, the startup has worked with AARP and UnitedHealthcare to create courses on topics such as wellbeing and stress management. All existing courses are free and non-credit, running from two to four weeks, and the company claims that about 40,000 people have signed up for courses since launch.

What Brands Need To Do
As today’s consumers increasingly start to shun away from ads with the help of ad-blockers and ad-free subscription services, branded content offers real values stands out as a great tool for brands to capture consumer attention. Branded online courses can be a very effective form of content marketing, due to “the high degree of user engagement and the associated glow that attaches to the sponsoring brand,” as The Big Know’s CEO puts it. But with the rising concerns surrounding the deceptive practices in native advertising, brands will need to proceed with caution and care if they wish to reach consumers with branded online courses.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image courtesy of The Big Know’s website

 

Geico To Sponsor Puppy Bowl In Virtual Reality

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
You can now watch Animal Planet’s annual canine football event in virtual reality, thanks to Geico’s sponsorship. The 360-degree experience will be available through Discovery VR apps, Samsung Milk VR, and Animal Planet’s YouTube page. As part of the sponsorship, viewers will also be treated to an interactive tour of Geico Stadium, where the Puppy Bowl will be hosted.

What Brands Need To Do
As VR technology continues to garner interest and inch closer to the consumer market, brands seeking to engage consumers with immersive experiences should start experimenting with VR content today. It can be done either through sponsorship like Geico did here, or by partnering with VR content creators to develop their own branded VR content, as Marriott Hotel, Birchbox, and JCPenney have done recently.

 

Source: AdAge

Apple Extends App Analytics To Apple TV

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple announced on Monday that it has extended App Analytics feature to support tvOS apps, allowing developers to get detailed feedback on how users are using their apps on the new Apple TV. Now developers and brand marketers can granularly measure marketing campaign, get app usage information, and track in-app purchases for their tvOS apps.

What Brands Need To Do
With its App Store and Universal Search, the new Apple TV offers a great platform for branded content to live alongside with traditional media content. This new analytic feature can help brands closely measure how their apps are doing and better understand which piece of content is working, and adjust their app design or update their in-app content accordingly. For more actionable suggestions on how brands can market on Apple TV, check out our Fast Forward here.

 

Source: 9to5Mac

 

Best Of The Lab 2015: How To Create Branded Content That Works

Posted on by Lab Team

Welcome to the Lab’s year-end review, looking back at some of our best and most popular posts from 2015.

With the rise of ad-blockers, brand advertisers are increasingly turning away from online banners and looking into new ways to reach consumers. One great way to do so is through branded content. Throughout 2015, the Lab’s research team partnered up with Google and Yahoo to study the effectiveness of branded content on a global scale, to better understand consumer perceptions of branded video content, as well as how to use personalization to find the right audience for your brand content. Take a look at our findings:

IPG Lab + Google Release Deconstructing Branded Content: The Global Guide To What Works
IPG Lab + Google Present Blurred Lines: Creating Content That Works
IPG Lab + Yahoo: Giving Consumers The Personalization They Want

 

Google+ Revamped To Focus On Brand-Friendly Features

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
For a while, Google’s social platform Google+ looked like it was heading towards the sunset, as Google pulled out its key features like Hangouts and Photos and promoted them into separate services. But with an overhauled site that debuted on Tuesday, it seems like the Alphabet company is not giving up on Google+ just yet. The redesigned site runs on Material Design, which helps to boost its performance on mobile devices.

More importantly, the new Google+ puts two features, Communities and Collections, front and center. Communities, first introduced to Google+ about 3 years ago, is functionally equivalent to Facebook Groups, allowing users to come together and form groups based around a specific interest, organization, or cause. Collections, on the other hand, was added this May to give users a way to build Pinterest-like curations around certain topics and share them with others.

What Brands Need To Do
Both Communities and Collections are very brand-friendly features, allowing businesses and brands to leverage their content to reach Google+ users with specific interests. For instance, a restaurant can post pictures of their dishes in the foodie community, or a travel brand can start a Collection called “Coolest Places To Visit.” The redesign puts an emphasis on giving users designated spaces to share content and browse curations around their specific interests, an emphasis that brands can utilize for targeted content marketing.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image is a promotional image from Google’s Official Blog

How Toyota Is Using Custom Twitter Emoji To Connect With Football Lovers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Automaker Toyota has become the latest band to join in on the branded emoji craze and partnered with Twitter for to reach football fans. Positioned as “a digital tailgate cheer,” Toyota will launch a contest to encourage football fans to tweet its new campaign hashtag #letsgofan, which comes with a custom fan finger emoji. The automaker is also hoping that this would help drive fans to download FanMoji, a branded custom keyboard app that Toyota recently launched as a part of its new sports-centric campaign.

What Brands Need To Do
Twitter started testing hashtag-specific custom emojis earlier this year, with Coca-Cola providing the first branded emoji in September. From ABC’s TGIT lineup to brands like Dove and Starbucks, those mini digital stickers that reward consumers for tweeting out branded hashtags are quickly proliferating across the twitterverse, offering brands a good visual signifier to engage the fans with.

 

Source: Digiday

 

IPG Lab + Google Release Deconstructing Branded Content: The Global Guide To What Works

Posted on by Lab Team

Click here to download the report.

Branded content, defined in this research as content that lives on its own, produced by and for the brand, as opposed to content produced by someone else the brand affixes itself to, has transformed marketing, overall. With the increased emphasis on cross-screen viewing, and digital at the core of brand communications, branded content has become a core part of many brand campaigns.

IPG Media Lab, a division of IPG Mediabrands, in conjunction with Google, today announced the results of the industry’s first global comprehensive branded content effectiveness study. Aiming to understand consumer perceptions and to compare the effectiveness of branded content and video advertising, this closed study surveyed 14,780 consumers, looked at 50 brands, across 19 verticals, in 10 countries, assessing how branded content is perceived in different parts of the world and how this translates into branding effectiveness.

Content That Works

Based on the research we conducted, here are two examples of content that was effective and seen differently by consumers.

Nutroplex: 

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Rexona: 

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You can download and read the report here.

 

Buzzfeed Now Allows Branded Content Into Its Entertainment Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier this week, BuzzFeed updated its editorial standards to allow its “non-news” editorial staffers to participate in the creation of branded content, encouraging collaborations between its editorial and advertising staff. The company has been a leader in establishing a new business model for digital publishing and breaking down the traditional separation between editorial and advertising is likely to continue. The change makes it possible for brands to sponsor segments of Buzzfeed’s scripted entertainment products, including digital videos and podcasts.

What Brands Need To Do
With the rise of ad-blockers, more and more brands are turning to native advertising via content sponsorships and branded content, which Buzzfeed is a master of. With its digital videos amassing over 1 billion monthly video views, Buzzfeed’s policy change makes its entire content talent pool available for brands to tap into and reach Buzzfeed’s predominantly Millennial and Gen Z audience.

 

Source: Poynter

 

Why Sundance Launched A Program For VR Content Creators

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Aiming to “empower artists on the cutting edge of storytelling,“ the Sundance Institute – the organization behind the famed annual film festival – is teaming up with virtual reality firm Jaunt to launch a residency program to nurture VR content creators. The program is set to run for six months with resources and VR production equipment provided by Jaunt.

What Brands Need To Do
One hindrance in the development of VR technologies has been the lack of quality VR content, and Sundance’s new program signifies the content industry’s recognition of this issue and is taking measures to fix it. Similarly, Facebook-owned Oculus also created its own in-house VR studio, which debuted its first digital short Henry earlier this fall.

With the $99 Samsung Gear VR coming this Christmas and Facebook’s Oculus shipping its first consumer-facing headset in Q1 2016, next year is poised to be a monumental year for virtual reality. Some brands, such as Marriott Hotel and Target, are also dabbling in producing branded VR content. Other brands that seek to engage consumers with immersive experiences should be mindful of the rapid developments in VR.

 

Source: Wired

 

Google Brings Podcasts To Google Play

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google is ready to challenge Apple’s close ties to podcasts, whose name derived from Apple’s iPod. The Alphabet company is readying the launch of a dedicated page for podcasts in Google Play, allowing podcast creators to upload content directly to Google Play Music. Podcasts will also be included in the Google Play Music app, making it the first first-party app for podcast listening on Android devices.   

What Brands Need To Do
Thanks to last year’s surprise hit “Serial” from This American Life, podcasting has been enjoying a surge in audience interest and resultingly, marketing opportunities, where brands aim to reach a targeted audience of specified interests with sponsorships and native ads. Earlier this month, Coca Cola struck a content deal with iHeartMedia to produce a coke-branded music podcast to target teens. Google’s added support for podcasts on Android devices will no doubt help further expand the reach of podcasting and solidify its status as a burgeoning marketing channel.

 

Source: Re/Code