What We Have Done | 
Audrey: And, today’s vending question is, what is branded content?
Karl: So, branded content, to us, is when a brand has a campaign that they want to run, and they pay a platform like ours to create a unique property, either a video, or an article, or a meme, to weave that message into our day-to-day content, and we launch that to our audience. So, when you watch it as an audience member, it’s gonna look and feel exactly like what what we used to do, on a normal day basis, just that your brand and your product will be mentioned or weaved very nicely into the content, and we make it known that it is sponsored, and paid for, by a particular brand partner.
Audrey: So, basically, it is a lot more like a story. It just doesn’t hot-sell. Hot-sell just doesn’t work anymore, these days, right?
Karl: Absolutely, so, I think people want messages that are creatively weaved into a story, at the core they really want the entertainment first, and that’s really what we believe in, that you should not just shove a message into someone’s face, and say, buy this, or go there, or do that, right? Instead, you want to let the audiences sort of really get a sensing of, hey, that’s a pretty cool product, or that’s a pretty cool campaign, that I might want to check out, and you give them that liberty to do so.
Audrey: So, over here, you know, what I’m hearing is of story, connection with people, resonance, and, of course, brand affinity, as well. Just to share with everyone a little bit of history of branded content. I think, back in those days, when the digital boom happened, banners, display advertisings, you know, were the thing, right? Back in those days. Display advertising has around, like, 44% click rate, it was crazy, but, as time goes on, people are becoming very tired of ads, and then, that’s where native ads come about, ads that looks just like just another Facebook post, but, with that too, after a couple of years, people are putting on ad blockers, right? We are talking about it just now. And which is why, which is why we start seeing a rise of branded content. We did this, I guess, this two years, and, I believe it’s gonna be even more prominent in years to come.
Karl: Yeah, so, actually, backstory is that, we started our business because we started talking to some brand partners who were putting a lot of money onto, for example, click through ads, and search ads, and, the budgets were not being utilized, because, not many people were clicking through. A lot of their users that they were targeting, especially 18 to 35s, they were not actually caring at all about the ads, so, the budgets were not being spent, and, they had no way to reach this target audience, which is why they said, hey, you know, what if we could work together, get something funny out, how would that turn out? And, I think that really gave birth to our business, and we kind of rode that branded content wave, as you mentioned.
Audrey: yeah, that’s awesome. All right, so, you know, if you guys have any more questions, feel free to drop us a note at NEXT Digital Marketing Lab, and in the future, we’ll be interviewing business people, entrepreneurs, as well as digital marketers, to pick on their brains, and, to find out out more insights about what they do every day.
