The Changing Face of Branded Content: From Advertisement to EntertainmentFor years, branded content meant television commercials, for all practical purposes. The TV commercial's days as the big player in branded content are numbered, though, and for good reason. The advent of cable TV started the process by fragmenting the audience. More channels and more specialization means that audiences for any given station at any given time are smaller than they once were. Where advertisers in the past could expect a third of the viewing audience for popular shows, today, even the most loved shows see audiences of a few million: a tiny part of the total available audience.
The ability to record television programs also reduced the efficiency of commercials. With a VCR, a viewer could record the program they wanted to see and skip through the commercials. A DVR makes it even easier to do just this. Fewer than 20 percent of the audience is actually letting those commercials play, and an even smaller number of them are actually watching while they do.
Broadband has also changed the branded content landscape. Websites or web services offer popular television programs with no or limited commercial breaks. Programming developed by these services and sites directly never even air on broadcast television. They aren't even structured in the same way.
Understandably, the approach to branded content had to change, as well. Advertising and marketing firms are looking now toward branded entertainment as the successor to traditional branded content. Branded entertainment has been around for decades, of course, but is seeing a resurgence today. Since the early days of television, companies have used program sponsorship to get their products in front of viewers. Game shows, variety shows, and soap operas were all vehicles for this type of advertising. Product placement is another example of this, wherein companies pay content producers such as studios or musicians to feature their products in their films or music videos.
Companies also use narrative storytelling that they create to present their products or services to an audience. Companies often hire famous talent, such as directors or actors, to attract even more attention to the production. While these programs do showcase the products they are meant to sell very well, that isn't the only thing they do. They are also meant to build positive brand association by creating quality entertainment that viewers feel good about. These series or films aren't usually promoted by the company directly, but rather, the hope is that consumers will voluntarily share the content with others because they enjoyed it.
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