Awhile back, VP Sales & Marketing Chris Batty wildly predicted that branded content would comprise most of our business: "If we're around in three or four years, the majority of our advertising revenue will be in sponsored posts." Display units everywhere issued a collective sigh of inutility, but our fearless leader would end up being right.
Branded digital content is a cousin to the print advertorial, that portmanteau of 'advertisement' and 'editorial' which has splashed across magazines for decades. Gawker Media has experimented with this idea since our early days (see Art of Speed, our 2004 work with Nike and more recently Bloodcopy, our controversial branded blog for HBO's dramatic series True Blood). The success of these programs made clear the marketing benefits of marrying an obsessively consumed linear blog format with inspired brand messaging. Also confirmed: that the invention of Photoshop need not relegate all digital advertising to rectangular graphic plots!
And so in January 2009, we launched the Sponsored Post. It has since become the atomic unit of Gawker Media's branded content offering. The Sponsored Post delivers bespoke brand messaging in a familiar format — the blog post. Inserted at the top of the editorial flow at publish time, the post then paces along with the day's news chronology. The Sponsored Post can be issued singly or strung along in a series to form a brand narrative within our own editorial narrative. In addition, the Sponsored Post has all of the bloglike properties that make it as sharable, extensible, and long-lasting a piece of content as has ever existed in the online landscape. Most importantly, a permalink keeps the messaging available for reference and residual value accrual.
What's next in the land of Sponsored Posts? We will continue to work on what I see as the two main challenges:
i. elevating reception of branded content to the same level of reception as editorial content
ii. encouraging brands to let down their guard and be as authentic as possible in their conversations
More about Sponsored Posts.
