{"id":651498,"date":"2013-04-09T18:16:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T22:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=227457"},"modified":"2013-04-09T18:16:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T22:16:46","slug":"this-is-about-more-than-just-advertorial-its-about-brands-going-direct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/651498","title":{"rendered":"This is about more than just advertorial \u2014 it\u2019s about brands going direct"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been writing a fair bit lately about \u201cnative\u201d advertising or sponsored content, including a recent post about BuzzFeed\u2019s challenges<\/a> in relying on that as a business model. But as former Forbes.com founder David Churbuck points out in a recent essay, this phenomenon is about a lot more than just traditional publishers trying to adapt to what advertisers want in terms of content<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s about brands and advertisers literally becoming<\/em> publishers themselves.<\/p>\n

Churbuck, who helped create Forbes.com and later went on to work with McKinsey, was responding to a piece in the New York Times<\/em> about the increase in sponsored content<\/a>, and how it is being used in different ways by publishers like BuzzFeed, The Atlantic<\/em>, Mashable and Forbes<\/em> \u2014 a piece that includes some pointed criticism of the trend from blogger Andrew Sullivan (Note<\/strong>: We\u2019ll be discussing this and other issues around publishing at paidContent Live on April 17<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Digital<\/a><\/p>\n

As Churbuck points out, this focus on how sponsored content is being used by existing publishers ignores a much more disruptive force, which is brands using the same tools to \u201cgo direct,\u201d as blogging pioneer Dave Winer has described it<\/a> \u2014 something we at GigaOM and paidContent have been writing about for some time now. Says Churbuck: <\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Times missed the bigger trend: marketers going direct to their prospective buyers by becoming their own publishers, producing their own media and using professional editorial placements only to rent names, just as marketers have been renting circulation lists for decades to drive their direct mail campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cheap tools and an oversupply of talent<\/h2>\n

The former Forbes<\/em> executive goes on to detail some of the examples of this broader phenomenon that have been growing and evolving for some time, including brand \u201cnewsrooms\u201d such as the ones that Intel and Cisco manage \u2014 which in many cases consist of unbranded content about technology that looks indistinguishable from any other tech blog. Churbuck also mentions:<\/p>\n