P r o m o t e d C o n t e n t
Sounds a lot like your favourite
Canada Wide magazine, doesn't it?
Magazines, after all, don't overtly
sell things. They either add value to
people's lives or they're ignored and
go out of business. It has to be useful,
entertaining or informative. Or,
ideally, all three.
Now, does it start making sense
why all you hear these days is that
all brands—from car companies to
toilet paper brands—need to be
media brands?
Exacerbating this flight to utility
and content is the recent display/
banner ad blowback and froth over
"native advertising," whereby a
brand's messaging lives in an editorial
context of the site, resembling stories
and news feeds and not the tiny
illegible banner ads that look so sad
on mobile screens.
And since every company needs to
be a media company now, there are
plenty of service providers willing to
help that happen. And that's why ad
agencies want to be in the magazine
game: the potential for them to lose
market share not just to other agencies,
but to a multitude of "storyteller"
subspecies is unprecedented.
What is inevitable is the coming
competition between the content
creators—those set up to create
content quickly and distribute it
cheaply—and their traditional partners
in accessing the client's media spend:
the ad and media agencies.
This, of course, gets really awkward
given that publishers still depend on
these agencies to buy their media.
But how long this treaty holds—
especially as publishers continue
to battle flat print ad sales and only
marginally proitable CPM sales—will
be fascinating to watch. Or, if you're a
40-year-old media company trusted by
clients and audiences, capitalize on.
Tom Gierasimczuk is VP Editorial and
Business Development at Canada Wide
Media. He wants to talk to you about
custom content, native advertising and
brand journalism, so get in touch at
tomg@canadawide.com.
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