Download our latest white paper, `The Content Umbrella`

02 INTRODUCTION
“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
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
INTRODUCTION 03
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
04 INTRODUCTION
CONTENT CREATION &
DISTRIBUTION
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.
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
ABOUT 72POINT 05
ABOUT 72POINT
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 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.
72POINT
06 DISPLAY BLIND
“THE NOTION THAT THE
DISPLAY BANNER IS DEAD IS A
MISCONCEPTION. THE TRUTH
IS IT’S NEVER REALLY BEEN
ALIVE”
CONSUMERS ARE BECOMING TRAINED TO
IGNORE ADVERTISING PLACEMENTS
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
DISPLAY BLIND 07
DISPLAY BLIND
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.
MORE THAN A FIFTH OF UK ADULTS
USE AD BLOCKING SOFTWARE
72POINT
8 DISPLAY BLIND
1700
THE AVERAGE PERSON IS SERVED OVER
BANNER ADS PER MONTH
‘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
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
SPONSORED JOURNALISM 09
SPONSORED
JOURNALISM
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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10 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
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
SPONSORED JOURNALISM 11
THE BIG PLAYERS
Truffle Pig
A 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 Independent
Now 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 Labs
The 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.
FT²
The 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.
Buzzfeed
Like 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”.
72POINT
12 SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA
NATIVE 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.
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
SOCIAL MEDIA 13
HOW TO WIN AT SOCIAL
MEDIA MARKETING
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.
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
72POINT
14 SLAPPED BY A PANDA
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.
BILLION
SEARCHES A DAY
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
SLAPPED BY A PANDA 15
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.
89% OF SEARCHES IN THE UK ARE
MADE THROUGH THE WORLD’S #1
SEARCH ENGINE GOOGLE
72POINT
16 PR IN THE MIX
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
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
PR IN THE MIX 17
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.
PR ACTIVITY IN THE UK IN ONE
YEAR WAS £9.62 BILLION, UP OVER
£2 BILLION FROM TWO YEARS
PREVIOUSLY
72POINT
18 PR IN THE MIX
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 EASILYDIGESTIBLE MORSELS.
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
CONCLUSION 19
THE CONTENT UMBRELLA
OFFERS BOTH OPPORTUNITIES
AND CHALLENGES FOR
SPECIFIC DISCIPLINES AND
THE CONTENT INDUSTRY AS A
WHOLE...
72POINT
20 CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
For 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.
CONTENT UMBRELLA WHITE PAPER
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