• by Erik Sass , January 21, 2015

Another native advertising product is hitting the marketplace with this week’s launch by digital publishing platform Flipboard of a new ad offering, Promoted Items, that allows brands to integrate content including articles, videos, photos and products into the user’s personalized magazines.

Brands using Promoted Items for content marketing can place messages alongside relevant editorial by choosing from interest channels, including news, technology, sports, business, style, entertainment, automotive, lifestyle, design, travel, or culinary and food.

The marketing content is clearly labeled “promoted” and appears with attribution to the brand responsible, but appears alongside editorial content. Marketers can include calls to action that will enable further engagement, for example, signing up for a newsletter or following their branded magazine on Flipboard.

Among other benefits, Promoted Items gives marketers that already have created branded magazines a way to increase the reach of their branded content and native ads via Flipboard’s personalized publications. Publishers can do the same on behalf of native ad clients by extending the reach of sponsored content from their own sites.

Promoted Items is set to debut on February 1 with launch sponsors including Levi’s and NARS Cosmetics. The University of California will appear with promoted items from its magazine, Fiat Lux, about scientific research.

Flipboard has been running ads within users’ personalized digital magazines since 2011, when it introduced the first “full page” units that appeared between editorial pages. However, this marks the first time that marketing content has been integrated into the editorial content stream.