Dive Brief:
- The Washington Post is launching a new branded content ad unit called “Post Cards” per a company blog post.
- Post Cards take ad delivery to a new level of personalization by breaking the branded content into different multimedia parts and using personalization to deliver specific content types preferred by people served an ad. For example, one ad could be served to different people in a text format, video, infographic or gallery.
- “For years, the digital advertising conversation has been dominated by two movements: programmatic and branded content (call it what you will). This is certainly the case here at The Washington Post where we more than doubled programmatic and branded content revenue in 2016,” the company wrote in the post.
Dive Insight:
The Washington Post's Post Cards ad unit is the latest example of a publisher looking for new ways to reach an audience that has soured on traditional display and other intrusive digital ad formats. With the new native ad format, the Post has recognized that different people engage with different types of content and even the same person might engage with different types of content on different devices. Post Cards uses technology to apply a top-level of personalization for delivered ads by serving specific content types to specific people on specific device types.
A number of publishers have become more innovative in content and advertising offerings as well as more protective of ad revenue streams as ad block software has significantly cut into traditional display and other website ad formats that once were the staple of publishers' online properties. Overall, publishers' digital monetization efforts continue to struggle and by driving innovation, these companies hope to be able to raise the price on ads.
Huffington Post recently borrowed from Snapchat with a new content feature called storybook that consists of vertical images and motion graphics for viewers to swipe through. At the same time, more publishers are considering ad-free premium subscriptions.
