• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, September 30, 2015

This is not new but it's worth sharing, given the current focus on ad blockers and the resultant hand-wringing among marketers and agencies renewing their focus on "unblockable" native advertising as if it will save advertising...and the publishers that host that advertising.

In a piece entitled "Why Native Advertising Won't Survive Regardless of FTC Involvement," the Content Marketing Institute's Kirk Cheyfitz wrote: "Here’s what content marketing has demonstrated so far: Brand storytelling with rich content is powerful because audiences -- the people formerly known merely as 'consumers' -- pay attention to valuable content and reward brand-authors by sharing such content with friends and strangers on social platforms. This social sharing increases impact (by two to four times, studies show) and reach (up to nine times, mathematical models show), reducing media spend and boosting efficiency (by as much as 100 times).

A story good enough to accomplish all that is actually rendered less effective (from the advertisers’ viewpoint) by appearing to be part of a publisher’s site. Brand-told stories work harder for a brand when they appear on neutral platforms (YouTube, for example) or sites owned by the advertiser.

Why? A brand must be known as the provider of such content so audiences will see the brand as trusted ally, valued adviser, and inventive entertainer. No sane brand would spend money to create great content only to let some publisher or broadcaster get the credit."

Is Cheyfitz right? If you attended Content Marketing World or Hubspot's Inbound, both held during the same week early in September, you'd very quickly come to the conclusion that the content marketing space, which is very different than the approach native advertising take, is gaining stride. 

I'm not sure who first said it, but there's a saying that goes along the lines of "a bad ad in a good medium is better than a good ad in a bad medium." The gist is that it's the surrounding, non-advertising content and the audiences who consume that content that are more important than the ad itself.

And while content marketing certainly is gaining stride, ask yourself this; is bad content in a good medium better than great content in a bad medium? That right there, unfortunately, is content marketing's biggest challenge; too much crappy clickhole-style content masquerading as informative content.

Now yes, like everything else in life, content marketing done well can and does work. But it's awful difficult most of the time to pass through the sea of 12 Exotic Foods You Have to Try, Number 5 Will Make You Barf-style headlines to get to the good stuff.

It's only a matter of time before some enterprising geek develops a clickbait headline blocker.