Branded Content- A Blessing and A Curse

There are currently three major trends that major brand advertisers are looking for when it comes to online advertising. While the order and momentum of these trends are up for debate, their significance as a factor in purchasing decisions is undeniable.

In no particular order:

1) Targeting- Advertisers pay premium to ensure their campaigns are seen by a relevant audience. You would never see an Axe Body Spray commercial on Lifetime or a Estee Lauder commercial on Spike. The same applies to online campaigns although hyper targeting the right demographic is trickier to accomplish on the web.

2) Performance- Unlike radio, tv, and print advertising,  online advertising allows for advertisers to track various metrics to see how effective their campaign is. How often did people click on an ad? Did they buy anything after clicking? How long were they on our site? Did they come back? Did they unmute our advertisement? Hit replay to play it again? These are all very basic metrics advertisers look at and are key areas of focus that often lead to repeat campaign buys.

3) Custom Branded Content/ Sponsorships - Popular sites and networks of late have been pushing this new approach in involving brands with sites and their content opposed to just pure display units. Gawker Media has been very effective in skinning their various sites and ESPN of late has shown some pretty cool custom looks for ad campaigns as well.

However custom design is one thing, but what about branded content? And by branded content, I mean having a brand interject their brand into content itself.

Sometimes it makes sense like this Axe campaign with College Humor.  Other times its an abomination like this ESPN Frosted Flake initiative. Watch one of the videos......its pretty painful.

So how do these bad branded content sponsorships occur?

Well for starters, publishers and sales guys like money and often don't think through how readers will react to certain forms of content. Secondly media buyers are somewhat under the gun to come up with creative ways to spend their clients money. Something "outside the box" and not pure display.

So in this scenario you have people on both sides of the table trying to make a deal without really giving thought as to how the actual branded content will be received by the audience in question.

I myself am not opposed to branded content, but it has to be seemless and blend to web properties in question. It also cannot seem forced and cheesey. Below is a great video mocking the branded concept by College Humor. I love the guy on the left who just spews out buzz words. Great stuff of how some of these campaigns can go wrong.