Last updated on October 25th, 2015 at 09:49 pm
A trend B2Bnn has spotted recently is marketers and advertisers blending creatives and science in programmatic sponsored content.
Programmatic sponsored content is exactly what the name implies. The publishing of sponsored content is automated through companies such as AppNexus and Sharethrough that provide native ad formats which will run on media publishing platforms like Forbes and People.
By automating sponsored content, brand marketers skip a major hurdle in the marketing process, that is custom content creation for each publishing platform.
Advertisers’ algorithms will determine where it’s best to display each format and piece of content, aiming to put sponsored content in front of people willing to consume them. Now AppNexus and Sharethrough are introducing real time bidding for these ad formats which will make buying and rolling out of these ads as easy as it is for traditional ads.
Because it is tedious to create native ad formats for each publishing platform, programmatic content uses science to cut back on the creation. For B2B marketers, this could reflect serious budgetary concerns. Automation speeds up the process by identifying smarter ways of displaying content across platforms and, at the same time, keeping them native. Marketers can now buy content to appear programmatically across sites.
Sponsored content may not always appear seamlessly native in the publisher’s platforms, but they will still provide less disruption and better user experience while not taking too much of the brand’s resources as compared to creating custom content for all ads.
It’s not a surprise. Sponsored content or “custom” content have been continuously registering better numbers. In appearance, these ads are more content than advertising – a clear response to studies pointing toward consumers favoring content by more than 70 percent compared to ads.
Displayed as native ads or ads that blend in with a site’s web design, sponsored content delivers results with a two-pronged guide: supply quality on-brand content while providing a seamless, non-interruptive user experience. Banner ads (interruptive and lacking in messaging) have long been drowned out by native ads. Providing marketers with an automated solution will give them more time to fine-tune content and test across platforms to come up with better marketing strategies.
In a report by content firm Contently, Chris Rooke, SVP of Marketing and Communications at Nativo, said that consumers expect disruption in media publishing sites but they wish to stay inside the website. With programmatic sponsored content, most models bring users to a different platform. Even when the content provided is of high quality, this process can still add to content’s bounce rate. It is not a foolproof solution but it still streamlines best practices through automation.
