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InContext / An inside look at the business of digital content

Brand content will explode with AI. Are publishers ready to capitalize?

January 25, 2023 | By Jason Kalin, Chief Business Officer – NativoConnect on

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, we see more and more examples of AI-generated content in our daily lives. It is only a matter of time before brands start to adopt these tools to scale their content creation and power their content marketing strategies. This trend will continue to accelerate as AI gets better at producing quality content.

For publishers, this presents a huge opportunity. Brands will need help distributing the influx of new content, and publishers are in a prime position to provide that assistance. But are we ready? Do we have the infrastructure in place to handle the increased demand?

Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: the world of brand content is about to get a whole lot bigger, and publishers need to prepare by focusing on strategies to scale their sponsored content programs.

Content is about to get a whole lot bigger, thanks to AI creation

Companies will no longer be limited to having just a few people write their content. Instead, with automated content creation, brands can scale their content quickly and easily – and leverage their content resources to refine the messaging. This means less time spent creating individual pieces of quality content, allowing for more ideas and creativity to be explored on a grander scale. Companies may find themselves communicating with consumers in ways they never thought possible before.

This dynamic change in how brands approach content creation will undoubtedly open up new opportunities and heighten engagement between brands and customers. The content marketing problem will shift focus from resources required to generate impactful content to finding distribution partners that can prove a shift in brand consideration. We expect big changes on the horizon as AI-written content takes on an increasing presence in the market.

Brands will need help distributing all this new content to drive consumer consideration

With the ever-increasing influx of content, brands are truly facing a looming challenge. How can they keep up with the speed and quantity of new content while making sure it has an impact and drives consumer consideration? How will they know which content connects most with consumers?

The answer lies in strategic partnerships with publishers. For brands to be successful, they must find reliable partnerships that allow them to reach their target audiences quickly and efficiently.  Brands need experts and strategists who understand how to reach their customers and how to leverage optimization technologies to ensure the right brand content is served to ensure that readers are guided through the buyer’s journey. Reporting will shift from traditional advertising and attribution metrics to content and consideration insights such as lift studies, engagement, and audience insights.

Publishers are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend as they have a captive audience

This shift to AI-written content presents an opportunity for publishers to act as mediators between the content and its audience. Publishers have a captive audience and the expertise and experience necessary to ensure that all content reaches the right people in the most efficient manner possible. They can help brands successfully scale their content distribution quickly, efficiently, and accurately so that their message gets out loud and clear. Moreover, leveraging first-party data about their audience enables publishers to provide critical insights into how content is being consumed, as well as its impact on moving readers through their buyers’ journey.

But they’ll need to find innovative ways to scale their operations

We can expect content to explode around us, and for publishers to capitalize on this trend, they need to find effective ways to run their ad operations and make their sponsored content programs scaleable. That means if a publisher relies on manual processes, custom codes, and complex CMSes to run these premium programs they won’t be able to keep up with the sheer volume of sponsored content campaigns thrown at them. To meet the demands of our new digital landscape, organizations must figure out how best to automate their processes to scale sponsored content for brands.

How can publishers prepare for this explosion of content?

To meet the needs of brands adopting AI technology to scale the production of their content, publishers should focus on streamlining in a few key areas:

Campaign setup

Implement their own AI Content tools to suggest variations on existing content that can continually feed into optimization and reporting providing invaluable insight into content performance.

Also, with many publishers running sponsored content through their website CMS, we have found that programs run in this manner cannot meet high demands when sponsored content is sold at scale.

Campaign optimization

Machine learning optimization technology: AI will help draft the content, and publishers can provide content variation recommendations. When you feed this data into an optimization engine, campaign performance will inevitably see a lift and deliver valuable metrics into the type of content that resonates with a brand’s audience.

Opportunity awaits

Taking these steps now can give publishers a major edge in the rapidly changing landscape of brand content distribution. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, publishers can capitalize on this trend by finding innovative ways to scale their operations and become strategic mediators between brands and audiences.

Disclaimer: This article was written in part by AI.

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