Can advertising enrich content? Trends publishers should be paying attention to

Publishers exist to deliver quality content to their audience. The content, first and foremost, should deliver a rewarding experience. Good content is current, trustworthy, and accessible.

Can advertising enhance content? In a word, “No”. A strong viewpoint for me, as a leader of an advertising driven business. However, content has to live happily alongside advertising as, for most publishers, advertising foots the bills.

The good news is that good content enriches advertising. Content drives so much of our world: nearly half of all social media posts refer to external content, a tweet is four times more likely to be re-tweeted if it contains a link to content.

Looking at leading publishers, you’ll find less advertising, more carefully placed. More ads don’t equate to more revenue.

Within my company, we regularly observe that good publishers make little revenue from their home page: the content is good so users engage with it, read it, delving into individual articles. Advertising performs better within a deeper layer of content – at the article itself. Poor publishers make great revenue from their homepage since visitors simply don’t want to read it. The ads are more interesting than the content.

While I believe that advertising doesn’t enrich content, it can enrich the content consumption experience. Many publishers have grasped opportunity between the advertising and content. For example, tech site Mashable knows they’ll be featuring the next iPhone. So why not support the content with an ad that tells readers where they can get it, and on what data bundles are available?

Content is a story and good advertisers understand that the act of selling is also a story: we don’t sell the product in Chapter One, we introduce it, develop awareness and trust, providing information and differentiation, and ultimately a sale is made.

Leading brands are aligning the selling process with content, taking the potential customer along a journey that sees the content informing the customer, the advertisement supporting this, and at the very end of the journey, if successful, a sale is made.

Sean Riley spoke at Content 2013.