Live From Las Vegas: SMG Unveils New Content Marketing Platform
- by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, January 6, 2014
Starcom MediaVest Group is launching a new real-time content marketing platform called Content@Scale. The Publicis Groupe shop disclosed the new platform Sunday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The platform will enable SMG clients to surface evergreen content from a number of publishers, including Glam Media and Forbes, and to publish live into paid media. Brands, SMG said, can amplify their campaign messages and repurpose the publisher content within their display media, owned websites and social channels.
Other participating publishers include Ahalogy, Demand Media, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Parade, Rodale and Time Inc. Content will span a number of categories including entertainment, health, technology and fashion.
SMG said that Content@Scale will launch in beta in North America in the first quarter, and then roll out globally by the second half of 2014.
Marketers will have access “to a library of high quality content consumers care about most, available on-demand,” said Lisa Weinstein, President Global Digital Data and Analytics, SMG.
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SMG describes the new platform as an “evolution” of its link.d3 real-time content engine, which leverages real time data for brands to align with relevant topics and react with content across paid, owned, and earned channels.
“Connecting with consumers in real time is critical for marketers in today's environment,” said Jon Suarez-Davis, VP, Media & Digital Strategy, Kellogg Company, an SMG client. The shop’s new platform “provides us with an engaging way to do so, by mining and distributing premium content that's most relevant to our consumers in a particular moment,” he added.
WTF is: "The platform will enable SMG clients to surface evergreen content from a number of publishers..."? Gibberish. Not content with this, er, content (used 7 times in this)!
So if someone in a marketer's target audience is doing a search on Kitchen Design this platform would enable a marketer to quickly deliver a paid media message--otherwise known as an ad--to the searcher that incorporates a blog or video or some other relevant piece of content from a participating publisher that hopefully adds to the consumer's knowledge of the subject being researched. That's surfacing content. Apologies for the jargon--should have been explained in the story.
I am curious, how do the creative agencies feel about this? Does the surrounding content replace the creative/brand message? Does the advertising creative become the publisher's repurposed content? And how does ASME weigh in on this? In essence, isn't this a digital advertorial made from editorial content?
So, this is a pure advertising play to deliver an "Content Centric Ad" and not an SEO or inbound marketing push? Google/Bing-Yahoo totally discounts this type of content ad syndication.