How Quartz is bringing storytelling, interactive design to sponsored content

The piece contains 600 well-written words, two Quartz-style charts and one interview with a Siemens sales manager. Prominently displayed at the top, bottom and on every graphic are the words “Sponsor Content” in bright orange lettering. “How data is generating green lights to keep you moving on the road” is a piece of native advertising paid for by Siemens and written by Quartz’s marketing team. It’s also a perfect example of how Quartz is bringing compelling storytelling and design to sponsored content.

Quartz is owned by Atlantic Media and staffed by financial and business journalism veterans drawn from legacy media like the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Last September, Quartz drew 16 million unique visitors from around the world, the majority on their mobile devices.

In addition to their daily news output, Quartz sends out three email digests whose delivery and content is optimized for three time-zones: for Europe, India and the Americas.

Quartz’s popularity and digital-first design is a model for 21st century news distribution and coverage. But so is its revenue model. Quartz is known in the industry for charging exceptionally high advertising rates to its clients, which represent mostly luxury brands like Rolex and Lexus, as well as companies like United Airlines, Vanguard investments and Chevron. But, rather than solely running videos from these brands or static materials that boast their products, Quartz uses an in-house creative team to extract relevant stories and tangential ideas that, when designed and built with interactivity and compelling story lines, read more like news or lifestyle pieces that cuts across industries and interests.

Read the full article here

Source: MediaShift

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