Tag: Sponsorship

Ebay Tests Sponsored Replays And Skips On Pandora For Holiday Campaign

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Brands can now sponsor replays and skips on Pandora, features that its free-tier users only have limited access to, to get their brand messages across. Ebay is among the first brands to test out this new native ad product for its two-week-long holiday campaign. Pandora first started testing brand-sponsored replays and skips back in September, and is now allowing brands to sponsor them based on music genre, such as holiday music, workout music, or latino music, so as to more effectively reach their target audiences.

What Brands Should Do
By providing users with functional value, this ad product from Pandora should help brands grab listeners’ attention and get their brand messages across. For brands seeking more effective ways to reach today’s ad-avoidant consumers, this type of native advertising should be worth a try.

For more information on how brands can leverage branded content and sponsorships to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Twitter Opens Up Periscope Livestreams For Brand Sponsorships

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter is now allowing brands to sponsor livestreams on Periscope as the company looks to monetize its live video app. Grey Goose and Chase are now sponsoring Periscope livestreams from former world champion Andy Roddick at the U.S. Open, who will name-check the brands during the live show. The sponsorship is said to be part of a larger ad buy that also includes promoted tweets and Twitter Amplify preroll ads for the two brands.

What Brands Need To Do
Twitter has been trying to keep up with Facebook in terms of building out live video products as it vyes for the ad dollars pouring into digital video. Periscope recently started testing the use of pre-recorded and graphics in livestreams to offer content creators more leeway. As Twitter opens up Periscope for monetization, brands gain new opportunities to work with popular content creators and influencers to reach an online audience in real time.

 

Source: AdWeek

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of the Periscope blog

Cadillac Partners With Emerging Fashion Designers To Elevate Its Brand

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Cadillac is teaming up with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) on a Retail Lab initiative that aims to foster young fashion talent. The Retail Lab will have a custom retail shop on the ground floor of the Cadillac building, where up-and-coming designers can showcase their latest work and receive mentorship in marketing and business development. As part of its rebranding efforts following decades of declining sales, Cadillac relocated its headquarters from Detroit to New York City in early 2015.

What Brands Need To Do
By working closely with the CFDA, Cadillac is integrating its brand into the glamorous fashion scene and trying to develop a halo effect that can help the luxury automaker elevate its brand. At a time when consumers are growing tired of being bombarded with ads and starting to actively avoid ads with the help of ad-blockers and ad-free subscription services, it is important for brands to try out new ways to reach their target audiences. Cadillac’s new initiative provides a good example of how a brand can enhance its brand equity and unlock a new audience by associating itself with a compatible cause, in this case prompting consumers to make the connection between stylish designer clothes and stylish luxury cars.

 

Source: Digiday

Branded Online Courses: The Next Big Thing In Content Marketing?

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
A Minneapolis-based startup The Big Know has scored 3 million in funding to help brands create sponsored online courses that consumers would willingly pay attention to. Launched late last year, the startup has worked with AARP and UnitedHealthcare to create courses on topics such as wellbeing and stress management. All existing courses are free and non-credit, running from two to four weeks, and the company claims that about 40,000 people have signed up for courses since launch.

What Brands Need To Do
As today’s consumers increasingly start to shun away from ads with the help of ad-blockers and ad-free subscription services, branded content offers real values stands out as a great tool for brands to capture consumer attention. Branded online courses can be a very effective form of content marketing, due to “the high degree of user engagement and the associated glow that attaches to the sponsoring brand,” as The Big Know’s CEO puts it. But with the rising concerns surrounding the deceptive practices in native advertising, brands will need to proceed with caution and care if they wish to reach consumers with branded online courses.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image courtesy of The Big Know’s website

 

Pandora Gets Big-Name Brand Sponsors On Board For Serial Podcast

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Two weeks ago, Pandora announced a deal to stream Serial, the surprise runaway hit that propelled podcasting into the mainstream in 2014, as each episode becomes available. Now, two well-known brands have signed on as the sponsors on Pandora. Warner Bros. will sponsor the Season 1 stream and the first half of Season 2, while Esurance will advertise during the second half of Season 2. As sponsors, they will get NPR-style audio ads at the beginning and end of each episode, with a persistent banner ad displayed on screen throughout Pandora’s stream.

What Retailers Need To Do
Podcasts provide a growing opportunity for brands to effectively target a niche audience with sponsorships and native ads. The first season of Serial was sponsored by Mailchimp, a marketing newsletter service, and study showed 81% of “Serial” listeners correctly recalled its ads. Getting these two new big-name sponsors on board cements podcasting’s place in the mainstream media landscape as a burgeoning marketing channel, which brands of all types should explore.

 

Source: AdWeek

Why More Companies Should Sponsor Developer Tools Like Capital One Did

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a surprising move, Capital One bank has sponsored a developer for his work on CocoaPods, an open-source platform for managing and scaling Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. It is rare for a non-tech corporation like Capital One to sponsor a developer tool, but as technology continues to infiltrate all facets of people’s daily lives, recruiting top-tier technical talent is becoming increasingly important to non-tech-related companies. Therefore, it makes sense for Capital One to make a nice gesture towards the developer community, especially considering it is coming out with its own mobile payment app.

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more companies realize the need for app developers and engineers to help them transit towards mobile, the market for recruiting those talents has become highly competitive. Normally, top engineers choose tech companies like Facebook and Google over non-tech corporations, as they are typically solving more interesting problems there. In order to compete with the big tech companies and startups, companies in other industries should consider following Capital One’s example, and build good will in the developer community to raise their profile among the highly sought-after talent.

 

Source: CocoaPods Blog