The Dark Future of Native Advertising

Dark staircase spiraling down.Native advertising, and specifically native publishing programs, will struggle in the future.

It isn’t because publishers’ offerings are flawed, because visitors have developed sponsored content blindness or because we have all developed an aversion to all sponsored content.

It comes down to a marketplace issue that, over time, will be a thorn in the side of native publishing. It will lead to a degradation of media brands, an influx of low quality content and ultimately the loss of many of the benefits that made native publishing attractive in the first place.

First a quick definition of native publishing. Then we will look at the research that points to an upcoming challenge to the growing native publishing market. [Read more…]

How Google Is Killing Native Advertising

How Google Is Killing Native AdvertisingNative advertising has been one of the hottest advertising topics of 2013. According to a recent survey, the majority of publishers now offer or plan to offer native advertising programs.

Two months ago, I examined the performance of more than 300 BrandVoice articles on Forbes, one of the most established native publishing platforms for B2B marketers.

One of the key reasons, however, is the surprising part. Google. [Read more…]

The B2B Marketing Guide to Paid Content Distribution

Speed Up Content MarketingForrester recently released a report pointing out the failure of most content marketers to plan for adequate content distribution. And they’re right.

Marketers are slaving over content today, but almost no one sees that content.

Optimizing your content for search and distributing it through your own social and email channels is just the starting place. For most B2B marketers, it isn’t nearly enough. [Read more…]

Outbound Marketing for Modern B2B Marketers

Inbound MarketingInbound marketing may be the hot topic for B2B marketers today, but today’s big B2B inbound marketers are all active outbound marketers as well.

So how do you pair your outbound marketing activity with your inbound marketing?

Here are six ways outbound marketing can support and scale your inbound marketing efforts and some of the channels that are appropriate for each one. [Read more…]

The Intersection of Content Marketing and Advertising

In order to deliver something more memorable than most advertising, marketers are turning to content that tells a story, engages the audience and delivers value.

But how do marketers reach a large audience with their content? Major publishers continue to have audiences that dwarf those of nearly every marketer, relying on just their own audience isn’t enough.

In the past, marketers relied on advertising and PR to get to these audiences, but those approaches mean the marketer’s own content is still a step removed. Today, there is an emerging third option that allows marketers to distribute quality content at scale: native advertising. [Read more…]