Branded content marketing – ranging from native advertising to content hubs, advertorials and branded entertainment – is one of the topics du jour, deemed an increasingly important part of the marketing mix, according to recent research from MailOnline. New data from Advertiser Perceptions supports the continuing emergence of native advertising: roughly 2 in 3 marketers and agencies surveyed indicated that they are somewhat or very likely to spend on native ads and content creation in the next 6 months.
The definition of native advertising remains somewhat murky (the IAB has set up a task force to tackle this problem), but many forecasts see digital ad sponsorships as a growing area, depending of course, on their definition.
Meanwhile, other results from the Advertiser Perceptions study suggest that 60% share of respondents’ digital ad budgets will be spent on direct buying in the coming 6 months, with the remainder on programmatic buying. Interestingly, during that time frame, respondents expect to allocate 61% of their mobile advertising budgets to mobile phones, with only 39% going to tablets. Based purely on an analysis of consumers’ online time spent with these devices, phones may actually be underweighted, although tablet users may indeed present a more attractive demographic than smartphone users.