Dive Brief:

• Cable network Turner is using this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to introduce its native advertising unit.
• The network’s plan is to offer brands the opportunity to buy native ads of sponsored content that fill the entirety of traditional commercial breaks.
• Dan Riess, head of content partnerships at Turner, told Ad Age, "The idea is to turn Turner into a giant native ad platform." 

Dive Insight:

Riess added the ad format would be “less interruptive for consumers and more powerful for brands."

The native ad unit will create content for brands and bring brands’ existing content to TV. It will also use internal targeting to place the ads across Turner’s network of cable channels, such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN.

Branded content isn’t new to Turner. One example was a partnership with Subaru and CNN’s branded content studio, Courageous. The result was two to three minutes clips called "CNN Heroes" that were introduced during CNN programming and took the place of a commercial break going back to regular programming once the clip ran.

"While other companies separate their data and content teams, we believe it's vital to bring them together, allowing advertisers to reimagine the possibilities of advertising in one conversation," Donna Speciale, president-ad sales for Turner, told Ad Age.

In December, following a three year process, Turner revealed a wide reorganization to its Ad Sales division intended to streamline agency and client partnerships. Speciale described the changes as "basically the beginning of reimagining advertising."