Publishers Take On Ad-Agency Roles With Branded Content, States Wall Street Journal

A New York Times Co. staffer recently spent weeks digging into a technology company, visiting engineering departments and interviewing executives to ferret out the best story there was to be told about the firm, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ report, in part, added:

“It wasn’t for a hard-hitting exposé. Instead, the writer was working for T Brand Studio, the company’s in-house ad agency, to put together a report commissioned by the media publisher on how best to market itself in an ad campaign.

“Publishers are pouring resources into such initiatives as they try to turn their niche “branded content” businesses into significant growth drivers. They are expanding into areas that traditionally have been the domain of advertising agencies—from doing research for companies to creating ads that run outside their own websites.

“For traditional news outlets such as the Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Time Inc., expanding in promising digital areas like sponsored content is vital. In many cases, print advertising is falling faster than digital-ad revenue is growing, and in the online world the dominance of ad giants Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google is intensifying. A recent round of poor financial results in the newspaper industry underscored those pressures, forcing publishers to cut costs and lay off employees.

“Branded-content revenue has been growing at a fast clip industrywide, though it still makes up a relatively small portion of companies’ overall revenue. Publishing executives acknowledge that building large, profitable branded-content businesses won’t be easy.”