Living In a World of Sponsored and Branded Content

Hailey Hrynewich

hh997012@ohio.edu

Sponsored Content...What Is It?

Sponsored content is a certain section of content on a Web site that is sponsored by a single advertiser. It normally will resemble the subject matter of the Web site and audience of those reading it as well. It is also known as "native advertising" or "content marketing".

 

The Absolute Musts of Sponsored Content

1) First priority is for it to serve the reader. This can be quite difficult since the primary goal of the sponsor is to share its own interests and new ideas. No one, however, wants to sit and read a bunch of content about selling something they have no interest in whatsoever. So, it is important for the sponsored content to relate and serve to the interests of the reader. 

2) The content must be 100% honest to its readers.

3) It must have some value to the reader whether they want to buy the proposed item for sale or not.

4) Content must relate to the subject matter of the news story. Readers interested in the subject matter they are reading would also be interested in the sponsored content related to it, most likely. Throwing in a random piece of sponsored content has a very bad chance of intriguing most of its readers.

5) Allow readers to respond to sponsored content, whether they are positive or negative comments.

6) Only run the content if you would consider running it even if it wasn't being sponsored. That shows that you are not only running it for the money, and it is also credible.

 

Where The Atlantic Went Wrong 

1) They published then removed a largely criticized sponsored post of whitewash praises of the Church of Scientology and also the leader of it.

2) They deleted all the criticism comments from readers and kept all the supportive comments in response to the company's sponsored content.

Branded Content... What is it?

Branded content is a section in a Web site dedicated to a brand that shares additional consumer value. It is supposed to give a greater consideration of a brand, not necessarily to actually sell a product. It is also not an ad that is paid for or sponsored.  

What's The Controversy With It?

Some companies try to sell their marketing content, or brand, as editorial content. The right thing to do is to clearly label the content as branded content. In order to show an extremely positive outlook of the company's brand, they sometimes will eliminate the negative comments on it. This only hurts the trust the reader's have of the news company and its editorial content. Positive or negative, all the comments need to be shown. As a reader of this content, I personally would be a little skeptical of a brand if I had only seen positive comments on it and not one minor negative one.

Sponsored and branded content are two things that are rapidly growing in our society today. It's a win-win situation for news companies and sale's companies for while one is willing to pay to get their product out there, the other needs the extra money to produce their editorial content. It's simply something readers have to learn to accept today. I find this type of content annoying when I just want to read the content I was interested in reading about and not all the extra things companies are trying to sell. Most importantly, though, keeping this extra content related to the article is key where as it won't seem as forceful and as much of a selling scheme to readers as it sometimes appears. This overall earns the trust and respect of readers.