Sponsored Content, Good or Bad?

Logan Rice

Lr977309@ohio.edu

In the Poytner article Peretti says, “And that’s what good advertising was in the Mad Men era of advertising — really thinking about a brand and what stories should it tell.” I do not agree or disagree with this statement, but being advertising major I think that these are two different worlds. 

One world is the Mad Men era, where advertisers did not have a social media platform, or digital billboards. In the Mad Men era all they had to advertise was stories. In today’s world all you need is one creative idea and it can come to life and into peoples homes via computer within seconds. That is also why I think people do not pay a ton of attention to advertisements, unless they are hysterical or offensive, because advertisements are everywhere. They are on your Facebook page; they play before you watch a YouTube video; they are on the side of the freeway when you are driving to the mall. In the Mad Men era this was not the case; they were mostly print ads or commercials. 

Sponsored content, done well, has the potential to be much more effective than display ads. Also, sponsored content has to fulfill most of the same principles as regular content. It is not as pushy or your typical in your face sales pitch. It simply has a story or funny, meaningful content that people want to read with a small line that says so in so sponsors this. Clients do not exactly like this approach because they are paying for the advertising and want to show their company off as much as possible. These clients have to realize that sponsoring content is the new way to get noticed.

I agree with the Poytner article when it says, ‘There’s something smart in the way BuzzFeed has done sponsored content.” They sponsor something funny, or something that people would look for on the Internet anyways, such as the “Virgin Mobile’s 19 Most Ridiculous Text Fails.”  I believe that sponsored content is more effective than regular advertising because people usually don’t search for a commercial or print ad on the internet, they search for something funny or with a shock factor. 

An example that comes to mind is when Red Bull sponsored a guy named Felix to freefall from space. He was the first one to ever do this and it caused a huge social media uproar. The video was played everywhere and people were talking about Red Bull for a while after it aired in 2012. 

Some people believe that native advertising “ is a very slippery slope and could kill journalism if publishers aren’t careful,” McCambley said. Publishers might build a revenue ledge through innovation of the advertising format, but the confusion that makes it work often diminishes the host publication’s credibility. If you sponsor something that nobody likes, or people find offensive, the clients may find themselves in a hole out of which they cannot dig. 

As a journalist you have to take risks and help decide what would be best for you client. People are over the cheesy, over-done advertisements, and clients constantly have to work on coming up with an innovative way to get themselves out in the public's eye.