As marketers discover the value of ‘going viral,’ a growing number of companies are investing heavily in content designed to blend in with the everyday web. Sponsored content, as it’s known, is shaping up to be 2013’s hottest online marketing trend.
Rather than buying traditional display media or search advertising, marketers are increasingly focusing on inserting their product or service into mainstream media stories using blogs, online newspapers, and e-magazines.
Sponsored content, a paid form of online content that’s reminiscent of the magazine advertorials of previous eras, is playing a major role in the strategies of brands such as Remington – a well-known manufacturer of grooming products.
Instead of promoting content on its own website, Remington has focused on having its promotional content published on other websites. In the last year, the company’s blog posts and videos have been published on Oprah.com and USAToday.com.
The results, advertisers claim, are significantly better than their experiences with banner ads and other ‘traditional’ online advertising. Spectrum Brands, the parent company of Remington, noted that it was easily able to target its core audience.
Sponsored content will make up a small portion of most firms’ advertising budgets this year, but will grow at a rapid rate, according to new data from online research firm eMarketer.
The research company believes that over $1.9 billion will be spent on sponsored content this year – a 22 percent increase from 2012. The industry is growing at a rapid pace that’s twice as fast as the average growth rate of online display ads.
As the industry grows, sponsored content deals are moving from the hands of the publishers into the scope of traditional advertising products. Google, which owns one of the Internet’s largest display networks, is moving into content marketing.
The company plans to use its DoubleClick advertising network to allow publishers the change to distribute promoted stories. Well-known blog Buzzfeed now has its own network for distributing sponsored stories on top social media websites.
With clickthrough rates for traditional display media on the way down and large-scale media buys no longer the primary focus of online advertisers, we could see sponsored content become the norm for online brand advertisers within five years.
