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Native Advertising Round-Up: Agency Teams Shift Towards Native; Digg’s Relaunch, Google’s Wildfire Acquisition, and Facebook’s Promoted Posts Drive Headlines

Is your team ready to take on native? Whether it is producers who can create excellent branded content or real-time copywriters who can work on the fly, there are clear signs that show agency dynamics are fundamentally shifting. In a Sharethrough-authored article on AdAge, we breakdown the reasons behind this shift as well as the type of roles that will help drive native content moving forward. For many of the companies below, these types of roles are already being examined, and in some cases, filled.

Additionally, while most of us have been busy watching the Olympics this week, the trio of Facebook, Digg and Google have been busy making headlines.

Don’t call it a comeback — this week Digg launched their new, advertisement-free site. By removing all ads (both native and display), Digg is making a decision to refocus on their users and rebuild a community base that long ago moved to competitors like Reddit. While their initial plan centers on community building, their clean, image-focused layout hints at a monetization strategy that will be focused solely on native. As Digiday’s Brian Morrissey points out in article below, “For content-based sites like Digg, the banner is unwanted.”

Google got a little bigger this week with its $250 million acquisition of Wildfire. Wildfire, a social marketing company, allows companies to manage their social media campaigns across the Internet. While their ability to offer sophisticated insights into application development and analytics provides tangible value, TechCrunch points out that they do not have the social API relationships to allow them to place ads. Instead, they have an exclusive social ad deal with social start-up, Adaptly. Safe to say that their social advertising M&A acquisitions are far from over….

Speaking of social advertising, Facebook continues to make news after its earnings last week by teeing up their new ad product, “Promoted Posts”. In this model, brands pay per status update based on how many of their followers they want to see the update. This is another attempt by Facebook to segment brands’ followers into groups that they can individually monetize, next up “Targeted Posts” a la Linkedin.

AdAge – The Future Belongs to ‘Native’ Ads, Is Your Agency Ready?

Don Draper may not understand why having a native team is important, but we certainly do. In an age where branded content and native postings are becoming the norm, it is imperative that agency teams stay ahead of the curve. By bringing in new talent that knows how to work within a native environment, agencies can think more creatively, respond to social media suggestions quicker, and pivot to new trends more efficiently. This article does an excellent job breaking down the talent categories that matter.

Digiday – The Aesthetic Pity of Web Advertising

Brian Morrissey does an excellent job breaking down what he calls the “display advertising industrial complex”. In layman’s terms, this essentially means that some form of banners will exist for the foreseeable future because advertisers are already used to dumping billions of dollars into them. Because of the complex, it is even more important for native platforms, like Sharethrough, to continue to find scalable solutions and showcase analytics highlighting the power of native advertising over banners. When you have people like Gawker founder Nick Denton saying he hopes one day his sites won’t run banners, you are on to something.

Mashable – Digg is Back With New App and Site Re-Launch

As discussed in the opening paragraphs, Digg rolled out a new website. By using larger story panes and a cleaner approach, the website looks more polished and is receiving positive feedback. One thing that is interesting to note about the new site is that much more of the content is picked by editors than users. This is very different from previous Digg versions that tried to remain user-centric. However, given that BetaWorks, which owns the news aggregator News.me, acquired Digg; it is no surprise that Digg has taken on more of an editorial voice and has moved further away from purely user-generated content.

TechCrunch – Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?

With the $250 million acquisition of Wildfire, Google made a statement that they consider social a very important part of the future. While AdWords has been a gigantic moneymaker in the search world, gaining access to social data will allow Google to find in-roads within Facebook and Twitter’s ad strategies. Wildfire is an excellent first step for Google, as they can help educate Google on social and begin to think of a strategy around social advertising.

Forbes – Facebook Page Owners Can Pay $500 For 250,000 Eyeballs With ‘Promoted Posts’

While last week was all about their earnings, this week was all about Facebook’s new “Promoted Posts”. Facebook, in essence, has (smartly) decided to charge brands to interact with their followers. While the prices range significantly depending on how many followers you want to engage, brands are now met with a choice every time they have a new link, statement, or video they want to post. Now the waiting game is on to see whether brands consider their Facebook community as valuable as Facebook believes it is.

If you like this round-up and want to receive even more insights into the world of native advertising and branded content, make sure you sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter.

Natively,
Team Sharethrough

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Sharethrough.TV Week in Review: Google, Duracell, Toyota and Old Spice Bring the Creativity

This week’s Week in Review features four of America’s most well known brands: Toyota, Google (twice), Duracell, and Old Spice. These videos do a great job of showcasing how creative top brands have become with online video.

In Toyota’s “The Ex”, Saatchi & Saatchi provides us with a humorous, stereotypical ex-girlfriend character, while also creating a broader story line that their target demographic will likely resonate with. Google, who rolled out possibly their most disruptive product in the last half decade (Google Fiber), created a video that aims to make viewers experience how internet speeds were in the past, present and how they will be in the Google Fiber future. It’s a slow build that delivers a lightning fast ending.

And then there’s Jay-Z. Duracell used the hip hop icon to power up their newest ad for Powermat. It’s just cool. As only a Jay-Z commercial should be.

Enjoy the videos below. If you are left wanting more, pop over to sharethrough.tv to watch our full library of the best brand videos.

The Ex

Brand: Toyota
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi

No matter how tired certain concepts are, if you execute well, it can work. This video exemplifies that. The ex-gf, ex-bf bit has been played out in seemingly every possible way, but this video quickly takes a funny turn, plays it light and cool and then knocks it out of the park with a perfect ending.

The Next Chapter of the Internet

Brand: Google
Agency: Venables Bell & Partners

An epic model installation introduces Google Fiber which provides internet speeds 100x faster than current broadband rates. As The Cars “Just What I Needed” comes into tune, the video plays on the old promise of the internet as superhighway. Unfortunately, this is just rolling out in Kansas City, but hopefully it signals the beginning of an even faster internet.

Day in the Life

Brand: Duracell
Agency: Woods Witt Dealy & Sons

Duracell bought Powermat and rolled out a new ad featuring Jay-Z. Check out who gives him a ring at the end…

Google Play Tests

Google’s in-house video production division, Studio G, has released a series of videos over the course of the past 6 weeks explaining the features of Google Play. (You may have seen some of them.) The features are so simplistic they don’t really need explanation, but apparently that’s kinda the point in this series of videos done by Wes Anderson’s fan club.

Brand: Google

I Will Live Forever

Brand: Old Spice
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy

Old Spice continues with their self-help “Believe in Your Smelf” campaign, this time with a scrawny kid willing himself to limitless Olympic gold and immortality.

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The Best In Branded Social Video From March 2012

It’s time to look back over the last month or so and hand out some unofficial awards for the best branded social video campaigns from March.

Marshall scored a huge hit with music fans and beer lovers with the video announcing their new Marshall Fridge, a dorm-sized refrigerator made to look like a Marshall guitar amp. The brand scored even more social buzz by going the extra mile with the promotion–the fridges appear to be real products you can order and own:

It’s election time again in the U.S., which means it’s political commercial time as well. And no one has a more social-media-savvy fan base than the sitting president:

Google scored several video hits in the last few weeks, including a few good April Fool’s gags like Google Tap:

Nike Football brought together two of the world’s best athletes to create one of the more memorable video ads in a while:

Finally, Rovio almost owned the entire month of March with an ad they waited until the 21st to release. Why? Because it’s an ad for the latest Angry Birds game:

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Google Nets A Trio Of Video Hits in the Same Week

While most brands have ventured into online video marketing, some are having more success than others. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see a brand as popular as Old Spice or Skittles hit a social video home run every time out. But until this week, I’m not sure I’d seen any one brand land three viral video hits in the same week.

Of course, maybe it’s a little easier of a feat to accomplish when you’re Google and you have a multitude of products, initiatives, and programs.

Google first made waves with video audiences with a video promoting an insanely cool project: bringing Google Street View technology and interactivity to the Amazon.

Next, they wowed the masses everywhere with a piece of futuristic science fiction about self-driving cars taking blind people to go run errands–only it’s not a futuristic video… it’s modern day technology:

Finally, a new video ad for Google Maps for Android:

All three ads feel like part of the same advertising family. They share similar styles and notes. And what Google always gets right, and that a lot of technology companies get wrong is the blending of cutting edge tech or gadgets with a human element. The eye-popping nature of the self-driving car pulls the viewers in, but it’s the human story of how that technology can improve the life of a blind man that really keeps them glued.

 

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Mobile Device Brands Take Different Paths To Social Video Success

By now most of you are probably pretty familiar with Apple’s typical style for their iPhone videos. In case you’re not, here are a few iPhone 4S ads that should give you a pretty good feel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86LxStLXrf4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSAje0EgYjY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ba0tZ_P5cg

Warm, cool, hip, useful, peppy. Almost all of Apple’s video ads share the same DNA as these.

And while the iPhone was really a revolutionary device, other brands have begun to carve out a section of the marketplace for themselves, most using completely different video styles from Apple.

Samsung, for instance, with the latest ads for their Galaxy SII device, chooses to poke fun at the perceived culture of cool with the Apple fans:

They also chose a very cool video ad route by sponsoring a new creative video from Freddie Wong, who also used the device as his camera for the video:

Google, on the other hand, straddles the line between viral content and traditional ads by showing off how great Google Plus Hangouts is on the upcoming Galaxy Nexus device. The spot has some incredible beat-boxing in it, as well as a killer demonstration of the power of Hangouts on the new Nexus phone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAlO9Mt7-XA

Finally, LG has taken the road less traveled, creating a recent ad for the LG Optimus 3D P920 that is part demonstration, part animation, and scored with music from some kind of game show or something:

There’s plenty of room in the mobile marketplace for several brands to succeed, and the same is true on YouTube. By finding and defining their video marketing identity, mobile brands can begin that process all brands aim for–engaging customers and turning them into fans.

 

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Google Plus vs. Facebook – Online Video Marketing Styles

There was a time when Google did very little marketing for its products. Those days have changed. Interestingly, Facebook is currently replicating Google’s earlier marketing style with content that is largely educational and very little media buying. With a flurry of new videos recently released by both companies, we thought it would be interesting to compare the online video marketing styles of two of Silicon Valley’s giants – Facebook and its newest serious challenger, Google Plus.

Google Plus has begun a pretty intensive video ad campaign lately, including television and online video as outlets. The first of the new wave of ads touted the new Pages system for businesses:

The next ad highlighted the benefits of searching on Google Plus:

Then the big guns came out, as Google rolled its next ad–”Sharing, but like real life”–on television:

Finally, the latest Google Plus video gathering buzz shows the flexibility of the Circles system by showing how one guy’s status changes over time for the girl he’s sweet on:

Now, let’s compare those ads, which all have a similar look and feel, to the kind of video ads Facebook leans on. First off, it’s important to note that Facebook actually doesn’t have many videos on their YouTube channel–just 51 as of this writing.

The most recent Facebook video, from one week ago, is about using Questions:

Notice the low view count. This video is much more instructional than it is marketing oriented–there’s not even any music or production value.

Their next most recent video is from a month ago. Again, it’s designed to show you how to use a Facebook feature (Messenger for Mobile). However, the production value is much higher with a soundtrack and much more polished voiceover:

Go back a few more weeks and you have the F8 Keynote Introduction, which has half a million views. It’s popularity is mostly due to the fact that SNL’s Andy Sandberg opened the show with his impression of Mark Zuckerberg:

There are clearly two very different approaches at work here. For the most part, Facebook isn’t using video to sell itself to new users. Indeed, at 800 million and climbing, you could make the argument that the service sell itself at this point. Instead, they have focused their efforts more on educational videos for their existing users–an equally valid use of online video even if it’s less likely to “go viral.”

Google Plus, on the other hand, is still in full-on growth mode. Awareness and growing the user base is paramount right now. So while their latest videos showcase features (like Facebook does), they’re pushing much harder to create an appealing brand for the service and to attract new users.

It will be interesting to see where the two companies go from here – Facebook has done very little to market itself in traditional ways, but that also was Google’s story at one time. One thing is for certain, the competition will only get more intense.