Everyone is talking about content marketing these days.  I read articles and blogs almost daily on the subject.  It has become a very important part of marketing and advertising campaigns. Why, because consumers love content.  As companies see a consumer preference for original content over traditional advertising, content marketing budgets are increasing.  These budget increases are typically for developing content for their owned and earned channels as opposed to paid media like online display advertising.

At Stone Ward, we believe the time is now for extending content into the display advertising for our clients.  With all of the advances in ad serving and distribution technology, display ads can now be mini websites full of functionality for the users to engage with and therefore serve as content management systems in their own right.  Banner ads can now include content that is trending in the moment, like social media feeds, store finders, maps, breaking news and more.

Online banner ads can now be a great vehicle for storytelling allowing your targeted audiences the ability to engage with your brand and have a memorable experience right in the ad.

By creating content-rich advertising, you fix a couple of things.

  1.  One of the main issues consumers have with display advertising is that the ads force users to click through to another site to engage with the brand.  Content-rich banners allow them to engage with your brand without leaving the site they are currently on, unless of course they want to.
  2. By extending your content marketing into your paid advertising you bring much needed scale to reach more people with the content you produce.

We always talk about integration and we do it with our social media to blogs to our websites, but we need to extend that integrated approach to our paid media so each channel can reinforce the other.