“with the lines between previously well ......content umbrella white paper ‘display blindness’...

CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER

“WITH THE LINES BETWEEN PREVIOUSLY WELL-DEFINED DISCIPLINES MERGING, EVERYONE IN THE INDUSTRY SHOULD BE CONTEMPLATING WHERE WE NEED TO GO NEXT. THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS.”Alison Clarke, PRCA Chairman and Grayling UK CEO

02 INTRODUCTION

One of the most pronounced developments of the modern digital media era is the consolidation of several disciplines under the same ‘umbrella’ of services.

The content umbrella denotes the merger of previously detached industries, including, but not limited to PR, digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimisation and content marketing, and it is a shift that has been on the cards for some time.

As Google demands better quality content, online media consumers get turned off by display and brands look to engage rather than convert an amalgamation of disciplines has occurred leveraged on the basic principles of creating and distributing content.

This white paper explores how marketing, social, SEO and PR industries are adapting to digital by focussing their efforts on creating engaging content centred around brand and ecommerce functions. We look at industry developments and highlight how previously well-defined disciplines have started to overlap, and how this will shape the future of each industry as well as the content industry as a whole.

72POINT

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION 03


DIGITAL MARKETING Is shifting from display to content as consumers become ‘display blind’.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Is growing increasingly content-centric to cater for a shift to mobile platforms

which are better suited to native content.

CONTENT MARKETING Is becoming one of the most important weapons in a marketer’s arsenal.

SEO Is building more quality content after ecommerse sites were ‘slapped’ by

Google’s Panda algorithm, which purged SEO cheats such as content farms, keyword advertising and link building.

PR Is well versed in creating and distributing quality content that cuts through

the noise in the market.

04 INTRODUCTION

CONTENT CREATION & DISTRIBUTION

72POINT

ABOUT 72POINT 05

72Point is the commercial arm of SWNS, the UK’s largest independent press agency. We have access to an exclusive newswire filing page-ready copy and rich media to national and regional news titles.

Our family of companies offer all the in-house expertise and tools needed to create original and topical stories and visual content for our clients. We have the team and the skills to distribute and promote that content to a wide and demographically diverse audience.

In short, we will tell your story and share your campaign via survey-led news, case studies, video and animations, infographics, interactives, and radio days.

ABOUT 72POINT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack Peat is Head Of Digital at 72Point. He works with digital editors, journalists and influencers to distribute branded content across online platforms, as well as managing native advertising and search products.

72POINT CREATES AND LANDS STORIES ON THE NATIONAL NEWS AGENDA.


“THE NOTION THAT THE DISPLAY BANNER IS DEAD IS A MISCONCEPTION. THE TRUTH IS IT’S NEVER REALLY BEEN ALIVE”

06 DISPLAY BLIND

CONSUMERS ARE BECOMING TRAINED TO IGNORE ADVERTISING PLACEMENTS

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ADVERTISING ADAPTS TO DIGITAL

Display advertising is at best a saturated market and at worst a marketing technique teetering on irrelevancy. Although some ad platforms provide cleaner ecosystems for display, there is very little evidence that standard display creatives ever deliver a significant return on investment. The only reason display comes out well in econometric models is because it shows incredibly high reach.

Yet so can content. Advertisers are increasingly turning to content to promote brands because, along with achieving a significant reach, it also covers up many of the cracks that are so evident in display. For a start, it gives marketers a rare opportunity to engage with consumers in a meaningful way. Most consumers recognise the motive behind a display ad, whereas they see value in content, which is why per-dollar content marketing produces roughly three times as many leads as display advertising according to Oracle research. Furthermore, the consumer becomes a brand champion by engaging with the content, creating a c2c ‘sharing’ relationship rather than a b2c ‘telling’ relationship.

DISPLAY BLIND

DISPLAY BLIND 07

MORE THAN A FIFTH OF UK ADULTS USE AD BLOCKING SOFTWARE


‘Display blindness’ has resulted in a notable shift to content marketing. The 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report of the content marketing industry found some 88 per cent of UK respondents said they use content marketing and 45 per cent now have a dedicated content marketing group. Native is also a rapidly developing industry, accounting for 22 per cent of digital display advertising in 2014. As a tool that transcends platforms and devices that share will only grow. Almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of publishers are currently using native advertising, and by 2017, spend on social native ads will grow to $4.57 billion. Crucially, sponsored content is deemed as a seamless part of the mobile experience. With more consumers accessing the internet via a smartphone over any other device, the tip towards content is only going to grow.

60 PER CENT OF CLICKS ON MOBILE BANNERS ADS ARE DOWN TO “FAT THUMB SYNDROME” *RETALE

1700THE AVERAGE PERSON IS SERVED OVER

BANNER ADS PER MONTH

8 DISPLAY BLIND

PUBLICATIONS CLAW BACK LOST REVENUE

Surviving the “adblockalypse” isn’t just an issue for the people spending the big marketing bucks. It also causes a big headache for the recipients.

With two-thirds of marketers saying they expect their organisation’s content marketing budget to increase in the next 12 months, publishers have pounced on the opportunity to claw back lost revenue. Not only as a platform, but as a source of content creators.

Truffle Pig CEO Alexander Jutkowitz recently claimed in the Harvard Business Review that journalists are best suited to create the content that connects brands with their audiences, as “trained journalists and writers are in the best position to synthesise information, capture a reader’s attention, and uphold a critical editorial standard.”

Journalists may have an edge on content marketers when it comes to copy. They have high standards for quality, the discipline to hit deadlines and they know editing processes inside out. Yet they have a lot to learn from content marketers too. Content marketers are experts in attracting high levels of traffic, writing and formatting for scan readers and optimising content for search engines. It’s about how the two sets of professionals learn from each other in order to give quality content a broad audience online.

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SPONSORED JOURNALISM 09

SPONSORED JOURNALISM

“IT’S AN EXCITING TIME TO BE IN CONTENT MARKETING – AND A PRETTY SATISFYING ONE TOO. FOR YEARS, WE’VE BEEN TELLING CLIENTS THAT CONTENT WORKS HARDER FOR THEIR MONEY, GOES DEEPER AND DRIVES LONGER-LASTING CHANGE THAN ANYTHING ELSE.”Andrew Hirsch, chief executive of John Brown and chairman of the CMA


10 SPONSORED JOURNALISM

Truffle PigA joint venture of the world’s biggest names in marketing, content and community - WPP, DailyMail and Snapchat. It will offer unparalleled reach through content planning, development and creation as well as amplification across digital media sites and platforms.

The IndependentNow web-only, it is seeking more money through native ads, or advertorial. Not only this, but it will hire editors and writers who have both editorial and commercial responsibilities.

Guardian LabsThe Guardian has bridged the gap between marketing and journalism by creating two types of commercial content: ‘supported by’ content, which is editorially independent and not subject to client sign-off, and ‘paid for by’ content, which is paid for and controlled by the advertiser.

FT²The Financial Times’ FT Squared content marketing suit brings together its semantic content matching technology, bespoke publishing partnerships and advertising features – with a new ‘Paid Post’ offering for clients.

BuzzfeedLike several other prominent viral sites, Buzzfeed has ditched display to trade in the world of social content. Their mantra is to eschew SEO tactics, heavily branded messages and sales-driven content in favour of “interesting, timely, and brand-relevant content aligned with pop culture”.

THE BIG PLAYERS

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SPONSORED JOURNALISM 11


12 SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIANATIVE SOCIAL VS DIGITAL DISPLAY

Like most platforms, the biggest challenge social media organisations face is how to communicate marketing messages to an increasingly mobile user base. Facebook currently caters for some 1.59 billion mobile active users a month, an increase of 21 percent year-over-year. Nielsen research recently revealed 80 per cent of UK users access Twitter via their mobile device, and a similar split between mobile and desktop occurs across the board.

On mobiles’ smaller screens, the stream is the experience. In-stream native ads look, feel, and function seamlessly across mobile and PC, which is precisely what brands want. Mobile ad spend was up 83 per cent last year, to $8.9 billion globally. AdRoll analysis of Facebook’s ad exchange revealed that ads in the News Feed achieve 49-times higher click-through rates and a 54 per cent lower cost-per-click than traditional placements in the right-rail sidebar, and other social media networks are taking note. LinkedIn has launched Promoted Updates and Twitter has been servicing Promoted Tweets since early 2010.

Image and video sharing networks are likely to follow suit, with Snapchat already ahead of the curve courtesy of its involvement in Truffle Pig *See: Sponsored Journalism. Spending on native social is set to rocket to $21 billion world-wide by 2018 as a result, and the metrics by which we judge success will also shift. Engagement and reach are now the primary KPIs, which fits into the pocket of well-produced content.

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VIDEO IS CONSIDERED THE BEST WAY TO REACH AN AUDIENCE AT SCALE WITH CONTENT THAT IT IS SMART, SHAREABLE AND PERSONAL.

VISUAL CONTENT THAT DRIVES TRAFFIC IS THE KEY TO CATCHING THE USER’S ATTENTION AND COMPELLING THEM TO TAKE ACTION.

RECYCLING CONTENT IS NOT JUST ACCEPTABLE, BUT ADVISABLE. BE PERSISTENT BECAUSE CONTENT MAY NOT BE UNTIL THE SECOND OR THIRD POSTING THAT YOU SEE THE WIN.

HOW TO WIN AT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

PINTEREST IS THE NEW GOOGLE, WITH UNREAL POWERS IN SEARCH. MORE PEOPLE ARE TURNING TO PINTEREST, NOT GOOGLE, AS THEIR PRIMARY SEARCH ENGINE, COMBINING THE POWER OF SEARCH WITH VISUAL CONTENT

SOCIAL MEDIA 13


SLAPPED BY A PANDA

GOOGLE DEMANDS QUALITY CONTENT

Google’s Panda algorithm instigated a golden age for purveyors of quality content. After years of SEO ‘cheats’ - content farms, keyword advertising, link building et al - there has been a mass purge of low quality, spammy sites which have been replaced by sites that provide relevant content that is interactive and of good quality.

BILLIONSEARCHES A DAY

14 SLAPPED BY A PANDA

Today, most ecommerce journeys begin with a question, and Google is overwhelmingly trusted by consumers to provide the answer. 90 per cent of users click on the first three results in Google and only six per cent click on paid search results. Which means businesses that make the effort to position themselves as thought leaders and are thrifty enough to engineer content to suit Google’s guidelines may well predispose consumer towards a sale.

The Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) Score update was a game-changer for the content industry. The shift from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals was essentially a vote of confidence in journalism, promoting original, high-quality content that is well researched and fact checked over ‘popularity’ indicators. A link back from a national news site, or even a name reference, is a tasty dollop of Google juice if you can get it.

Quality on-site content is equally important. A study of ranking factors found factors such as word count and readability have increased. The average text length of the top 30 pages increased by 25 per cent since 2014, which suggests Google is increasingly valuing longer form content that is easily digestible. It also values multimedia.

Infographics, graphs and videos have a tremendous life-span.

What Google Wants• Longer form content that is easily digestible. • Media enriched content. • Content that people share or interact with.

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89% OF SEARCHES IN THE UK ARE MADE THROUGH THE WORLD’S #1 SEARCH ENGINE GOOGLE

SEARCHES A DAY

SLAPPED BY A PANDA 15

PR IN THE MEDIA MIX


“OLD FLEET STREET HANDS MAY NOT WANT TO ADMIT

IT, BUT JOURNALISM AND PR ENJOY A HIGHLY

SYNERGISTIC RELATIONSHIP THESE DAYS”

Barry Dudley, The Drum

16 PR IN THE MIX

The historic love/ hate relationship between hack and flack is well documented, but in an age where publishers’ resources have been hit by decreasing advertising revenue and the need for content to drive traffic has increased, journalists rely on PR professionals to supply them with content.

PR was ranked as the number one source for journalists in a Cision study of 1.5 million journalists and influencers in 2015, demonstrating how public relations has moved fast to plug the content black hole with stunts, infographics, celebrity ops, photos, videos and survey-based stories.

In many ways, it was best placed to respond. Good PR professionals are cut from the same cloth as journalists, and understand what makes a good story. Former editor of PR Watch Sheldon Rampton, says that “In a lot of ways, PR people do the legwork for journalists — feeding them stories and sources, and doing research.”

The resultant growth in the PR industry has been phenomenal. The last PR Census revealed that the total value of all PR activity in the UK in one year was £9.62 billion, up over £2 billion from two years previously and in-line with consistent growth over the past ten years. But this creates a lot of noise. In the US, the ratio of PR people to “pitchable” journalists is now estimated at 4 to 1, resulting in email inbox overload, and a similar shift is underway in the UK. The Office for National Statistics’ 2015 Labour Force survey revealed that there are now 55,000 PR professionals in the UK, up almost 50% in two years. To cut through, the quality of the content is paramount.

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PR ACTIVITY IN THE UK IN ONE YEAR WAS £9.62 BILLION, UP OVER £2 BILLION FROM TWO YEARS PREVIOUSLY

PR IN THE MIX 17


QUALITY: FORGET THE HARD SELL AND THE DRY PRESS RELEASE. HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT THAT AUDIENCES CAN REALLY ENGAGE WITH HAS TO BE THE FIRST CONSIDERATION OF ALL CAMPAIGNS.

RELEVANCE: YOUR AUDIENCE WILL DWINDLE IF THE NEWS ISN’T RELEVANT AND IT DOESN’T RESONATE AND CONNECT WITH THEM.

SHAREABILITY: SOCIAL MEDIA IS ONE OF THE PRIMARY DRIVERS OF TRAFFIC TO A PUBLICATION’S SITE, SO ALL CONTENT MUST BE GEARED TOWARDS GENERATING SOCIAL NOISE.

VISUALS: PUBLISHERS DEMAND VISUALS TO CATER FOR AUDIENCES WITH MINISCULE AND FINITE ATTENTION SPANS. VIDEOS, GRAPHS AND INFOGRAPHICS HELP TO DISTIL ABSTRACT DATA INTO EASILY-DIGESTIBLE MORSELS.

18 PR IN THE MIX

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THE CONTENT UMBRELLA OFFERS BOTH OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR SPECIFIC DISCIPLINES AND THE CONTENT INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE...

CONCLUSION 19


CONCLUSIONFor marketers, ‘display blindness’ has resulted in a seismic shift to content, with estimates suggesting 85 per cent of marketing professionals in the UK now use content marketing and 64 per cent planned to increase their spending. “Producing engaging content” is the most commonly cited challenge for the industry, marginally ahead of “producing enough content” according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). Working alongside publishers, many of whom are creating a dual role or running two teams for commercial content and editorial, is also likely to be tasking.

SEO agencies will find making the transition to compete alongside marketers, publishers and PR professionals under the content umbrella the most arduous, but as Google demands better quality content that is engaging and relevant, it is a step up they must make. Today, most ecommerce journeys begin with a question, and Google is overwhelmingly trusted by consumers to provide the answer. 90 per cent of users click on the first three results in Google and only six per cent click on paid search results, which makes good content and a commanding rank in search an imperative for brands.

In marrying the brands needs with those of the publishers, PR is perhaps best placed to unify the umbrella of content. PR professionals understand how to create engaging content while at the same time making brand considerations such as marketing messages and SEO objectives. As a genuinely multimedia business that has been supplying content to national newspapers for 40 years SWNS / 72Point are well placed to meet the demands of the digital industries falling under the content umbrella. Not only do we know how to create great content, we can give it the reach it deserves by distributing it through established channels.

20 CONCLUSION

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“with the lines between previously well ......content umbrella white paper ‘display blindness’...

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