Every Monday Zebra Eclipse updates with a new Herd. The Herd is a digest of related links to stories appropriate to the blog. The goal is to show the common evolution of agency and publisher and to highlight the influence of creators, curators and community moderators.
- NYT, OITNB and the state of native advertising
Shane O’Leary is a planner at Target McConnells and has blogged some wisdom on the state of native advertising. He begins by tackling the differences between advertorial and native, although you may disagree with his conclusion, and then goes on to look at Netflix’s most recent native OITNB deal with the New York Times.
- Condé Nast, Google and Publicis come together to form 'premium' content agency
Here’s a twist in the “we’re all publishers” story I wasn’t expecting; a threeway team up with Conde Naste, Google and Publicis. The three will creating “La Maison”, helmed by Charles Georges-Picot, current CEO of Publicis 133, to produce content for marketers in the luxury space.
- Three staff cut as Polygon moves away from features and video
Games blog Polygon has let their video director, motion graphics designer and features editor go. Why? After 2 years of making videos and special features they’ve found it hard to draw the audiences required to support the effort. While sites like Twitch are likely a factor here – since gamers can just tune in real time to watch a game rather than wait for a polished Polygon video – the job losses show the challenge even big blogs have at scaling content at the right cost.
- Interview with Michael Brito: How to Transform Your Brand into Media Company via @britopian
Michael Brito gives an interview to Komfo on how brands can transform into media companies. He talks about content and distribution, storytelling and agility.
- Scribd Connu: a Literary Match Made In Heaven
Scribd the platform that turns PDFs into easier-to-read and web embeddable documents has teamed up with Connu. The partnership is designed to help surface new author talent to readers.
- Wattpad CEO Says The Social Reading App Will Be Free Forever And Make Money From Native Ads
The flip-side to agencies and publishers sharing a common evolutionary path is that publishers are getting better at making money from things enabled by, but not, their content. Step forward Wattpad the site that lets authors share their stories. They’ve confirmed that WattPad will be free forever as the platform will raise its revenue from native ads.
- Time Out appoints Livefyre to increase user generated content as digital push continues
LiveFyre offers a free comment platform to bloggers that competes with the likes of Disqus. Whereas the latter looks to earn revenue from integrating ad services into the comment ecology LiveFyre offers techno-agency deals with brands. Time Out’s become the latest to appoint the company and will look to use LiveFyre’s real-time tooks to increase user-generated content and native ad opportunities.
- Outbrain fails the ASA test for promoted content advertising – Marketers start to worry
- Content Is Crap
The main thrust of the debate here is that the word “content” is a rubbish way to describe what marketers and brands need to produce. Why does Zebra Eclipse care? In the post the author spells out that brands must think more like publishers if they want to succeed.
