Branded Content is becoming more and more common. What is it? Branded Content is something made by a content producer, like a podcast host or a youtube channel, and instead of just being sponsored by a company, the content is shaped around the advertiser’s branding or product.

Branded content is becoming more and more common because traditional advertising is becoming more and more difficult to do. Our society has become more and more immune to traditional ads. Ads in a newspaper or on radio are generally clearly marked and easy to ignore. Even banner ads and youtube pre roll can be ignored fairly easily or even blocked with some of the most common ad blocked software available online.

Branded content is great for two reasons.

1. It allows advertisers to get their message out in a way that fans of the content produced will consume. Branded content subtlety puts in product placement in a way that is almost an endorsement by these personalities. It directly targets the audience that a produce already has and is engaging with. This is a great value for a brand.

2. It pays content producers! As ad revenue continues to dwindle things like branded content will be one of the ways content producers can pay the bills. Normally I would put a rant in here about ad blockers but I will just leave it to this: It costs money to produce content. Using ad blockers is a way of stealing the content. Because this system is not working it forces content producers to create more content that is branded. An alternative to this are platforms like Patreon.

 

Branded content is bad for two reasons:

1. It is hard to do well. Working a brand into content without seeming forced or salesy is hard. It is best for brands to find content producers who align closely with your company to keep it from being forced.

 

2. It is a little sneaky. Sometimes branded content tries to fly in under the radar and this may seem dishonest to some consumers. This is especially ethically sketchy if it comes from a journalism organization. In the case of entertainment producers, I think this public sentiment will change as our society becomes more use to branded content and product placement.

That all being said, recently I saw one of the better examples of branded content in a spot by Dude Perfect. Bass Pro unleashed them on their new flagship store at the Memphis Pyramid. This was a good partnership for the brand and a good video by Dude Perfect, check it out:

The internet can be a dark place. Not because the internet is inherently dark, but because it is populated by humans who can hide behind anonymity.

This most recently reared its ugly head when Microsoft launched a twitter account managed by an artificial intelligence platform. Tay was a test by Microsoft to find something to interact with millennials and generation z. (Read more about Tay here.) Artificial intelligence learns by observing and interacting with the community it is put in.

When this was released, the internet went to work quickly. Within 24 hours of launching, Microsoft had to shut down the twitter account. The internet had taught Tay to be racist and sexist. With tweets like this:

Microsoft brought Tay back online a few days later and this was the result:

But at least they could turn off the account. In England they recently ran an online vote to name a new 300 milion dollar research vessel. The winning name: Boaty Mc Boat Face.

 

Oh internet, this is why we can’t have nice things.

New Facebook Page Layout on some mobile platforms:

Facebook has once again changed the way its Facebook Pages display on mobile for iPhone 5s. Although the popularity of the iPhone 6 is huge, the 5 models still maintain about 33% of the market. Here is kind of how they used to look and still look on the Pages Mobile App:

The cover photo is a crucial piece to any Facebook page’s visual identity. It has always been a struggle to get a cover photo that looks good on mobile and looks good desktop. This latest change makes it harder adding a third option for displaying.

And here is how they look on the Facebook App for iPhone5’s :

 

Before the change my tag line fit nicely into the the space provided but now it looks to small to fit properly. This new look leaves a lot of dead space around the tag line.

 

But the plot thickened this morning when I looked at a colleagues phone. Besides him not having liked my facebook page, the iPhone 6 displayed differently. It looks more like the traditional view we are used to. Here is a screenshot from an iPhone 6:

 

It still looks the same. It might be time to experiment to find a happy medium between the two models. It is also a little odd to me that Facebook would have this display differently based on the model. A reader, Jonathan Spotts, owner of Spotts Professional Computers sent in a screen shot from his Nexus 6 and it displays like the iPhone 5s.