[Video] How this traffic platform found the right distribution strategy for a client

This article is reproduced with thanks to Native Advertising Institute, a FIPP member. See the original article here. Jesper Laursen, CEO of Native Advertising Institute, will lead a panel discussion on native advertising at the 41st FIPP World Congress, 9-11 October 2017 in London, the UK. Meet him there.

Magnus Hultman, CEO of the traffic platform Strossle talks about the most important learnings from a successful content distribution partnership with the Austrian National Tourist Office which he presented at Native Advertising DAYS 2016. Strossle is the 2016 winner of a Native Advertising Award for ‘Best Native Advertising Platform’. Sign up for notifications about this year’s conference here.

Below are highlights from the interview which have been slightly edited for clarity.

Budgets moved from display and search to native recommendations

“The objective of the campaign was to see Austria as a summer destination. The Austrian Tourist Office understood that they needed to not shout it in the face [of the audience]. They needed to tell a story about why you should go to Austria in the summer, when you can go to Italy.

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That’s why we came in and did the first about 10 different articles. We compared display, search and content recommendations and [the latter] proved very well. We saw an incredibly high engagement, very high time spent on site. It was actually higher than search which is not very common. That proved that the content was good and that it worked to place content within content.

So the Austrian Tourist Office shifted a lot of the budget away from display and search and over to us. On top of the digital media mix they have newsletters and they have their own Facebook community where they also acquire traffic if you count that into the media mix, which I think you should.”

Find out where you get the most “bang for your buck” 

“If you work with content marketing and native it’s super important that you put a lot of effort into the distribution strategy. Look into several different platforms; the more the merrier.

And then you compare them; Where do you get the most bang for the buck? Time spent is the preferred metric for content.”

Pros and cons of different distribution strategies

“If you compare display, search and native recommendations I would say that for search there is an intent. If you can think it you can type it and of course that’s very powerful. The downside of search is that it can be very expensive especially in a crowded segment like travel and banking.

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If you take display it’s about reminding the audience. It’s a cheap way to get reach and you can get it up and running really fast. It will not necessarily drive conversions or clicks but using it out of a brand perspective is fine. The downside of banners is that you have ad blocking and that it’s hard to communicate a lot of things in a display banner.

And then we have native recommendations, content recommendations. Being in an editorial environment is on the plus side. After [the users] have consumed the content it’s like now what? What’s next? If you have more editorial recommendations then it’s easy to get [the users] hooked. Especially if it’s relevant what you place in front of them.

On the minus side it depends on what type of content you have. If you have very niche B2B content it might be a bit hard to find the audience.”

Three tips for paid distribution 

“Use many channels, compare the different channels and don’t forget about the content recommendations if you work with content marketing and native advertising. It’s a kick-ass for that.”

DOWNLOAD: Magnus Hultman is featured in ’23 Predictions for Native Advertising in 2017′ [FREE E-BOOK]

Jesper Laursen, CEO of Native Advertising Institute, will lead a panel discussion on native advertising at the 41st FIPP World Congress, 9-11 October 2017 in London, the UK. Meet him there.

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