Tag: content marketing

Tumblr Launches GIF Maker To Help Brands Create Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tumblr, home to endless reblogged GIFs, has finally come out with its own GIF-making tool to help users create fun animated images with ease. Aptly named GIF Maker, the new feature is built into Tumblr’s mobile app and can help you turn photo bursts and videos in your camera roll into GIFs. The Yahoo-owned microblogging platform has been paying special attention to GIFs as of late, introducing a GIF search function and a dedicated GIF-watching section named Tumblr TV in June.

What Brands Need To Do
GIFs have long been an uber-popular format in Tumblr’s ecosystem, and GIF Maker can help brands and marketers on Tumblr create more viral, shareable content. As Tumblr continues to make itself more brand-friendly and easier to use, brands should build a presence on this valuable content marketing platform and try out this new content creation tool.

 

Source: The Verge

Facebook Launches Notify App To Lend Its Notification Center Reach

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out a new iOS app called “Notify” to allow users to receive push notifications from publishers and other brands of their choice. Upon logging in with Facebook account, users are asked to follow “stations” that they are interested in, which include a variety of content publishers such as BuzzFeed, CNN, Vogue, Getty Images, and The Weather Channel, plus Groupon and Fandango. The notifications will direct users to designated web pages where they can consume the content or, in Groupon’s case, find more about its Deal of the Day.

What Brands Need To Do
Although Facebook does not feature any ads in Notify for now, there are certainly opportunities to offer sponsored “station” suggestions for users to follow. From a content marketing perspective, this new app can offer brands a new channel to stay connected to consumers and deliver their branded content. Not every brand has the resources to develop their own app and incentivize customers to download it, and Notify can provide those brands with an alternative way to infiltrate the lock screen and reach consumers via notifications.  

 

Source: The Verge

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Facebook Newsroom

IPG Lab + Google Release Deconstructing Branded Content: The Global Guide To What Works

Posted on by Lab Team

Click here to download the report.

Branded content, defined in this research as content that lives on its own, produced by and for the brand, as opposed to content produced by someone else the brand affixes itself to, has transformed marketing, overall. With the increased emphasis on cross-screen viewing, and digital at the core of brand communications, branded content has become a core part of many brand campaigns.

IPG Media Lab, a division of IPG Mediabrands, in conjunction with Google, today announced the results of the industry’s first global comprehensive branded content effectiveness study. Aiming to understand consumer perceptions and to compare the effectiveness of branded content and video advertising, this closed study surveyed 14,780 consumers, looked at 50 brands, across 19 verticals, in 10 countries, assessing how branded content is perceived in different parts of the world and how this translates into branding effectiveness.

Content That Works

Based on the research we conducted, here are two examples of content that was effective and seen differently by consumers.

Nutroplex: 

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Rexona: 

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You can download and read the report here.

 

Your Creative Process Can Now Be Livestreamed On Twitch

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitch, the biggest livestreaming platform for eSports and video gaming, announced earlier today a new content hub that aims to spotlight the growing number of artists and creatives on its platform. Twitch’s main landing page now includes a tab labeled Creative, which links to an entire homepage dedicated to Twitch Creative where painters, designers, and musicians can broadcast their work as it happens.

What Brands Need To Do
According to Twitch, its creative community now has about a thousand active creators and two million monthly viewers. This sizable new subset of the audience on Twitch offers brands a new channel where they can broadcast their behind-the-scenes creative process and turn it into content marketing to engage with their fans. Moreover, Twitch monetizes through ads for non-paying viewers, and Twitter Creative will no doubt attract a specific set of creative-learning audience that some brands, especially those in fashion or art, covet.

 

Source: The Verge

CNN Enters Content Marketing With New Video Platform GBS

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier this week, CNN announced its plan to launch a digital video platform named Great Big Story (GBS) that targets millennials with “three to five non-fiction videos per day” that caters to the interests of “urban, globally curious 25-to-35-year-olds.” CNN plans to rely on Facebook, YouTube, and an upcoming GBS mobile app as its primary means of distribution, with an app for OTT streaming platforms like Roku and Apple TV coming next year. The news network indicates no immediate plans for display advertising or pre-roll commercials on GBS, but focusing all initial advertising efforts on branded content instead.

What Brands Need To Do
By launching GBS, CNN is effectively building a young-skewing content platform to go after the content marketing dollars, which puts them in direct competition with the likes of Buzzfeed and Vice. For brands, it’s time to recognize the rising importance of branded content, especially videos, in reaching today’s younger, tech-savvy audience and start to team up with media owners to create quality content that people want to watch and share.

 

Source: AdAge

Voxelus To Launch The Largest VR Content Marketplace In Early 2016

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Voxelus, a new virtual reality content platform, has announced its plan to launch the “largest VR content marketplace” in the first quarter of 2016. Last month, Voxelus launched Creator, software that allows users to build VR content without writing a single line of code. Now with this new marketplace, Voxelus aims to facilitate the sale of user-generated VR content as well as facilitate collaborations between content creators.

What Brands Need To Do
2016 is poised to be a monumental year for virtual reality. With the $99 Samsung Gear VR coming this Christmas and Facebook’s Oculus shipping its first consumer-facing headset in Q1 2016, virtual reality is nearing a tipping point of mass adoption. In preparation of this nascent medium, some early-adopting brands, such as Marriott Hotel and Target, already dabbled in producing their own branded VR content. This marketplace by Voxelus could provide an open platform for brands to team up with media owners and content creators to help produce their own VR content, and therefore is something that all brands looking to develop VR content should keep an eye on.

 

Source: PSFK

How MTV Used Vine To Capture The Viral Moments Of VMAs

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
During this Sunday’s VMAs broadcast, MTV’s official Vine account outshone the channel’s performance on other social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. While much of the conversation surrounding the annual award show happened on Twitter, it was Vine that had the most interactions among all social media, with the top vine video amassing nearly 11 million plays.

What Brands Should Do
Vine’s endlessly looping, six-second-long format made it a perfect platform to disseminate and consume the viral moments of media events in bite-sized portions in real time, something that most brands should leverage into their social media efforts. Essentially gifs with sound, Vine offers the perfect format for brands to create short-form viral content to engage their fans with. Plus, its deep integration with Twitter no doubt helps to expand its reach as well, as Vine videos are natively embedded in tweets.

 

Source: Digiday

Header image taken from MTV’s Vine Account Page

Event Recap: District Dialogues – The Future of Media

Posted on by Ben Hone

On August 27th, the IPG Media Lab attended a District Dialogue Meet Up on the future of media. The panel included Chelsea Emery, Deputy Editor of BBC Capital at BBC Worldwide; Jessica Manis, Digital Associate Director at Optimedia and; Alicianne Rand, VP of Marketing at Newscred.

There was a lively discussion about where the ad industry is headed and the best ways to reach audiences in the future. All the panelists (and most of the audience) agreed that it is becoming increasingly important to add value to consumers and create content that users will choose to engage in. Audiences are already less responsive to and tolerant of traditional banner advertisements and this trend will continue going forward. The panelists believe that banner ads will never go away entirely although they agree that they are becoming less effective, especially with most browsers ending support for flash and enabling ad blockers.

Another topic that was discussed at length was the fact that the lines between editorial and advertorial are getting increasingly blurred. It was interesting to hear the panelists discuss this separation between church and state. Those on the editorial side were adamant that the line must be drawn and that journalistic integrity must be preserved. Those on the marketing side believed that although the distinction is important, it was not quite as essential. They argued that great content could be created even when paid for by a marketer. Interestingly, one member of the editorial side of the discussion did acknowledge that her salary is funded entirely by ad revenues.

The final trend discussed was the fact that the power to create content is shifting from big publishers to consumers. Social media is allowing anyone with access to the internet to become a source of information and thought-leader. The distribution channels allow individuals to be heard on a much wider scale than ever before and these avenues are only going to become magnified as technology brings people closer together. A member of the audience summed it up perfectly: “Content is king but distribution is queen and she wears the pants in the relationship.” The advertising landscape is certainly shifting in many ways and marketers must adapt to provide value to consumers and take advantage of rising distribution models.

 

How Old Spice Is Winning With Native Ads On Imgur

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Old Spice has launched a native ad campaign on Imgur, an image-sharing community of 150 million – mostly millennial male – users, which makes it a good fit for the men’s deodorant brand. The brand’s sponsored post utilizes popular memes of the platform, and also engages Imgur users with self-aware language and challenging users to “gif wars,” a popular form of voting contest unique to the platform. The campaign has received very positive responses so far, racking up over 750 comments under its launch post.

What Brands Should Do
With the increasing usage of ad-blockers (for more on this, read our newest Fast Forward feature), more and more brands are turning to native ads to combat the viewability issue. Old Spice worked with Imgur’s in-house creative team to create branded content that fits the platform, and their familiarity with its community shined through. For brands that are considering native ads for content marketing, this example is further proof that tailoring your ad content and format to the platform of choice gives the best chance of success.

 

Source: Digiday

Header image taken from Old Spice’s Launch Post on Imgur

Facebook Revamps Notes To Attract Long-Form Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has started testing an update to Notes to make it easier for users to create and read long-form content on Facebook. The revamped layout looks similar to that of popular blogging platform Medium, complete with new features such as header images, user tagging, links and hashtags.

What Brands Should Do
Facebook has been steadily building out its content offerings in recent years, with special attention to short-form videos. Back in May, it launched an “Instant Articles” program that aims to lure digital publishers to put their content up natively on Facebook for faster mobile access and allegedly better distribution. So it makes perfect sense for Facebook to push further into building out its long-form content tools. For brands that wish to utilize Facebook as a native channel for content marketing to engage with fans, this revamped Notes could be a good testing ground.

 

Source: The Next Web