Content has become a key part of companies’ marketing strategies in recent years, with many building newsrooms and hiring journalists to capture audience attention the way more “traditional” media companies do.
“Apple Tracking Transparency taught brands the lesson that they needed to own their audience without intermediaries. With third-party cookie deprecation on the horizon, that need became more pronounced,” said Adam Berkowitz, chief of staff at LiveIntent, which works with brands publishers to help them add advertising to their email newsletters.
Some companies are going one step further: Selling advertising and sponsorships alongside their content to generate revenue and help offset their content costs. While established examples remain far and few between, brands like Robinhood and Sotheby’s are leading the way, with plans to turn their content initiatives into new revenue streams for their companies.
“To a regular brand [setting up advertising] takes a huge mindset change – and if not, at least makes them somewhat queasy. They’re not used to thinking of themselves as a purveyor of advertising. They understand at the end of the day, the content that they are producing is to drive commerce, but they don’t think of themselves as an ad network. So it’s just a little bit of a mindset change that’s significant,” said Berkowitz.
The other issue is talent. Setting up an advertising apparatus often requires dedicated teams, or at least, talent that isn’t easily found. Berkowitz said that in his conversations with brand publishers, he often finds that there is a “dearth” of monetization talent out there. “And if you’ve got real solid yield experience, you’ve got it from traditional publishers. So brands have to poach people from publishers – which we’re seeing quite a bit of now.”
Here are six reasons brands shouldn’t be squeamish about adding advertising to their content.
The technological barrier is low
“The thing we hear is that there’s a delicate interplay between marrying the need for revenue with the need to protect the reputation. So brands are rightfully being careful about which ads go in the email. But the fact is that getting started with advertising in content is more of a culture shift challenge than a technological one. Modern technology makes retail media, particularly in email, quite simple. It’s not hard to manage a nascent advertising program with modern technology. It’s a pretty low lift.”
Advertising is a way to offset costs
“Creating content is not without cost, and who better at a brand to win to your side than a CFO? Ads in email offset your costs in a millisecond, creating more latitude internally. That’s an easy conversation to have – brands should put ads in their email so they stop being seen as cost-centers.”
The first-party data play
“Ads in email newsletters are another way for brand marketers to generate more rich first-party data. The interplay of clicks from an ad in an email adds to the first-party troves of these companies. The whole goal for all of this first-party data is just to be able to continue to maintain a relationship with a known person across devices and channels. So the more first-party data brands have, the more possibility brands have for maintaining that relationship. The ad in the email is a driver of relationships. And the goal is to create a font of data that you can use anywhere for any use, including proving out the value of each campaign and channel with media mix modeling.”
Advertising creates a data stream
“The fact is that brand publishers should be able to use contextual signals from their content to figure out more data about their audience. Like, maybe there are subject lines people respond to. Maybe your customers like shorter content delivered snappier. Maybe they like big paragraphs. All of this should inform your marketing and company positioning.”
Advertising can add authenticity and legitimacy
“There’s a body of research you’ve done, that suggests ads themselves create authenticity. If content doesn’t have an ad in it, to me it’s automatically self-promotional. But when I consume content from a brand that has an ad in it. all of a sudden that content’s infused with gravity. Capitalism is such where the ad lets the consumer know that the brand is taking their content seriously. Of course, who the advertiser is also matters, so for a more authentic and impactful content program, brands must adopt legitimate advertising practices.”
This post is presented in partnership with LiveIntent.