With the rise of the mobile revolution and growing use of technology in general, media companies have begun to shift their focus from print to digital. This change has publishers re-adjusting their strategies to better align with the digital landscape, including their revenue models and relationships with advertisers.

Until now, very little data existed to provide insights for publishers or their customers. Hubspot recently completed a survey of hundreds of industry professionals to help define and benchmark the state of digital publishing. Below are a few highlights from their Digital Publishing Benchmarks Report and what these publishing trends mean for brands.

The State of Paid Subscriptions

As data becomes more easily and widely accessible online, publishers have found it difficult to maintain revenue from paid subscriptions. Both B2C and B2B publications can no longer sustain a business model built on circulation profits alone. Only 10.9 percent of respondents cited paid subscriptions as their top revenue source.

So how can publications continue to spread their information to millions of readers without going out of business? Publishers have started diversifying their monetization methods by implementing a variety of digital products (listed below). Both B2C and B2B companies prefer website and email banner ads, as well as sponsored content or native advertising, as alternative monetizing solutions.

This move from paid subscriptions to digital products offers brands an opportunity to reach their target audience through banner ads and native advertising. Reaching the right audience is half the battle of successful content promotion. Taking advantage of this changing landscape can allow brands to increase awareness in their target market and grow the engagement and ROI of paid media.

The State of Sponsored Content

Moving forward, the landscape of digital publishing will continue to shift as more and more publishers adopt these digital products. The use of sponsored content and native advertising is expected to grow the fastest with respondents predicting the value to increase by 54.8 percent in the next six months – outperforming banner ads.

This shift again sheds light on the fact that audience is key. Unlike banner ads that have a limited inventory and can be interruptive for readers, native advertising has unlimited inventory and can enter your brand seamlessly into the audience’s experience. While earned media can still be the most effective media channel, paid media through sponsored content and native advertising can provide much higher engagement than the other digital products shown above.

Brands should take note and start allocating budget for paid media with sponsored content and native advertising. Choosing the right publications to sponsor is crucial. Ask for their subscription demographics and psychographics to ensure the correct targeting and highest ROI possibilities.

The State of Lead Generation

While many of the new revenue models appear consistent across B2B and B2C publications, it is important to understand the main goals behind the two types differ. B2B publications focus more on lead generation tactics than B2C. That means B2B brands tend to rely more on webinars, events, and email promotions to drive leads that can then be nurtured down the funnel with the company’s content.

In the B2C industry, specifically with individual company blogs (yes, company blogs are publishers, too), the message tends to focus more on crafting the company’s image and controlling the media’s perception. It can also help increase brand equity among the audience by sharing content that provides value for customers and educates them on the unique advantages the brand holds.

The information gleaned from this report further supports the idea that audience, not content, is king. Great content in front of the wrong audience leads to ineffective content promotion and unmet goals. Digital publishers have access to the segmented audiences brands are looking for and—due to the shift in focus from paid subscriptions to native advertising—are now offering highly segmented audiences to brands on a silver platter.

Understanding and adjusting strategies to include paid media budget for sponsored content or native advertising can allow both B2B and B2C brands to achieve their goals, whether it be lead gen or controlling their public image.

The post The State of Digital Publishing in 2015 [New Industry Data] appeared first on Relevance.

When promoting content, marketers already give their audience a little sample of what to expect. However, is that enough to ensure that people feel satisfied with their sample and are ready hit that form submit button to commit to the new relationship?

Learn the new way of thinking about content promotion by looking at how marketers are currently sampling their content, ways to improve those techniques and how to balance enticing your audience without giving away all the value.

On The Menu

You may have never viewed your current content promotion efforts as similar to offering samples; but that’s exactly what you’re doing. Before a conversion can happen, customers take a bite here and a nibble there that hints at what your content will “taste” like.

Here are a few of the types of samples that marketers currently offer their audience:

• Landing pages are the most common types of samples. When a person is determining if submitting the form is worth their time, they rely on the copy and major value propositions.
• Email promotions are another common form of content sampling; again, they provide short copy that tells the audience what to expect before they click.
• Native advertising, such as banner ads or graphical calls-to-actions, offer customers the smallest sample and need to be enticing enough to drive traffic to the landing page.
• Social media can include both textual and visual samplings of content to persuade your audience to convert.

Making Samples Special

If every time you went to Whole Foods they only offered the same samples, you would probably stop getting excited about your next grocery visit. Offering the same samples over and over again can get boring, redundant and predictable.

Granted, you can normally count on a few staples (fresh guacamole, juicy pineapple and hand-squeezed lemonade–the traditional crowd favorites) to provide consistency. However, the excitement comes from trying the unknown!

This should also apply to your content promotion. Landing pages and email may be traditional, but they’re also effective. Here are a few ways to spice up a standard email (just like upgrading from regular lemonade to hand-squeezed strawberry lemonade) and keep your promotion exciting:

• Highlight a full page: Let your audience sink their teeth into a big bite of that eBook. Let them see your content in action – show, don’t tell them your value.
• Value-packed paragraph: We’re all creatures of curiosity. Pick the most interesting paragraph(s) and reveal a portion of the copy to encourage customers to read more.
• Testimonial: Pick a select group of your audience and offer your asset before it’s released to the rest of world and ask for their thoughts on it. Then, with their permission, use their comments as part of the promotional campaign.
• Feature an infographic: Showcase an intriguing infographic on your email or landing page that piques the reader’s curiosity and encourages them to learn more.

The Post-Sample Conversion

The difficulty of sampling is finding the right balance of how much to let them try before they buy. If I know I can eat a whole meal of samples, what’s the point of purchasing something? They key, then, is to make the sample so good that they have to have more.

As marketers, we need to be the experts at understanding when and how to implement various sampling techniques appropriately.

• Cost: Most people are very protective of how much personal information they share with companies. The more information you ask and the more effort your offer requires, the larger the sample you may need to provide.
• Value: What value is your resource offering? Consider the value proposition, quality of solution and length. A one-pager doesn’t have quite as much to offer as a 50-page eBook.
• Innovativeness: Maybe your content is something not common in your industry or you’re trying to promote a cutting-edge solution. It may require a larger sample to convince the audience that this new idea is valid and worth the time investment.
• Unknown: Trying to stand out in an industry inundated with content may require using uncommon language, strange headlines and a lot of creativity. If your offer isn’t common, more visuals and explanations are needed to reduce that uncertainty.

It’s clear there is an overlap between how grocery stores promote their goods and how marketers promote their content. Landing pages, emails and native advertising are great tools; however, the same mix of channels and messaging can bore your audience.

Mix it up by implementing some of these ideas to enhance your customers’ experience. While experimenting with new sampling techniques, be sure to balance the sample with the content piece. Don’t give away the whole store, but give them enough to chew on.

Not sure where to start with content promotion in general? Download Relevance’s Quick Guide to Content Promotion:

The post Try Before You Buy: How Content Promotion Is Like Sampling at the Grocery appeared first on Relevance.

First, it’s clear they can assist at scaling content distribution, leading to an increase in impressions, unique visitors and more opportunities overall. Secondly, publishers that implement content recommendation widgets on their sites will reap the benefits of higher quality traffic, longer site visits and increased page views per session.

On the surface, such companies may appear synonymous with one another. So why not just throw all the networks in a hat and pick one? With the power of native advertising continuing to grow, it’s important to remember that not all networks are created equal.

This principal is the driving philosophy for Revcontent, a network committed to being the most selective and premium in the world. Below outlines some of the reasons why Revcontent’s intentional and distinctive strategy can provide advertisers with up to 50 percent higher ROI than non-premium networks.

Every Site Is Not Created Equal

Everybody wants to be “in” with the cool kids, but no one said it better than Gretchen Wieners:

Although it may sound harsh, selectivity has been key for Revcontent’s almost unheard of success, growing by nearly 900 percent in the past six months.

Following suit with their goal to be the most premium and selective ad network in the world (Jim Collins would certainly approve), Revcontent denies 98 percent of sites that apply. Instead of offering advertisers 100,000+ sites like most of the others, Revcontent’s selectivity and focus on finding outlets that can truly produce premium traffic from highly engaged users, naturally provides better quality traffic and leads. Brands like Newsweek, Forbes, NBC News, and Answers.com are just a few of the premium publishers who chose Revcontent over other top native ad networks.

In an industry that boils down to revenue and impressions, performance is king. Selectivity allows customers to see between two and three times higher RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions) compared to their competition. After entering into Revcontent’s elite two percent, Barstool Sports (one of the top independent sports and men’s lifestyle publications for the 21-34 year old male demographic) saw an increase in performance on their site from their content recommendation solution.

User Experience

Revcontent believes their customers deserve more than the current cookie cutter offerings of other networks. Whether on mobile, tablet or a traditional desktop, user experience makes or breaks the success of a site.

While some native advertising can interrupt content absorption, Revcontent offers innovative, adaptive and fully customizable widgets on top of seamless integration with their clients’ interface. This improved user experience provides more engaged readers while minimizing bounce rates that translate into loyal audiences.

People-Driven Technology

Further supporting the pursuit of a seamless user experience is Revcontent’s premium, people-driven technology. Their patent-pending Revcontent Widget Optimizer, powered by social-driven algorithms, can customize recommended content on an individual basis to reduce bounce rates and increase CTR. What the heck is a social-driven algorithm? Simply, it takes into account individuals’ behavior while interacting with your site and optimizes content recommendations to match that behavior. With their innovative technology such as Revcontent v2 and this widget optimizer, Revcontent offers better user experiences and even better ROI.

Along with the roll-out of the patent-pending widget optimizer, Revcontent also recently announced the hire of Rick Landsman as their new Chief Technology Officer. Landsman not only brings with him years of experience from co-founding two companies and serving top positions with leading industry companies, but also 15 technology patents that have defined the state of the digital advertising industry. Landsman says he’s excited to join Revcontent “because it provides unique opportunities to deliver native advertising that provides a win-win-win for advertisers, publishers, as well as users.”

Relationships Are Built on Trust

Trust. Sounds a bit cliché, but Revcontent isn’t just preaching open and honest relationships with their customers, they’re showing it, too. As a customer, you can expect to get transparent data truly representing the performance of their technology—no funny business here.

Revcontent also provides 24/7 expert support and solutions to maximize revenue potential. They are committed to seeing the success of their clients’ campaigns and assist every step of the way. According to the CMO at diply.com “We are obsessive over data and test all day long to maximize every component of our site and our user experience. After testing, we found Revcontent to simply be the best – hands down.”

It’s clear to see why Revcontent denies 98 percent of their partner requests. They may not have the colossal size of other ad networks, but they certainly provide higher quality. Offering such granular customization and targeting requires the right combination of selectivity, user experience and technology. Do you think you have what it takes to sit at the popular table with the other two percent? Fill out their entry form now to find out.

This article was written as part of the Relevance Approved Sponsored initiative, which brings news, insights and trends to the Relevance community from professionals in the content marketing industry. While Revcontent sponsored the article, I conducted my own review and do not speak on behalf of or represent their brand and strategies.

The post Not All Native Ad Networks Are Created Equal appeared first on Relevance.