BBC looking for Australian partners for native advertising push
One of the world’s biggest media organisations, the BBC, is close to closing out deals with Australian brands to carry native advertising on its news and features.
Carolyn Gibson, executive vice president of international ad sales for BBC Worldwide, told Mumbrella the brand is going to broach the delicate art of native advertising, or “partnered content” as it is called at the BBC, in Australia having rolled it out across other international markets six months ago.
Alistair McEwan, vice president of BBC Advertising in Australia and New Zealand, has been in discussions with “a multitude” of different brands in Australia, and is looking to partner with brands cutting across the technology, entertainment and financial services sector. But it is undersood no deals have been closed as yet.
Gibson told Mumbrella: “It could be a sensitive subject for an independent news organisation, in terms of how we enter this space in an appropriate way that will be comfortable for our audiences and I think we’re navigating that quite well.”
The BBC News website is one of the most widely-read in the world, and was tenth-most popular news site in Australia according to Nilesen Online data with 1.224m unique users last month.
Gibson
With two native advertising editors based in New York and London, and journalists around the world creating the ad-funded content, Gibson says it is important for advertisers to see their brand stories fitting in with the BBC’s high standards of reporting.
“The whole essence of native from the BBC’s point of view is about coming from within the BBC and produced to the standards the BBC holds itself to and that’s what our audience would expect,” she said.
“It’s in the interest for advertisers that the quality of the journalism in a native piece is equivalent and fits in naturally to the quality of the journalism across the whole site, so it’s really important to re-iterate that that’s our approach.
“We will work with our commercial partners to create something that’s going to engage their users, but this is not an advertorial, this is not a promotion or a puff piece, I don’t think we’ve got the luxury of that.
McEwan
“With brands like the BBC that’s not going to wash, so we had to do it in a certain way and its absolutely of interest to advertisers as well, I think we’ve had some real success with some of the partnerships that we’ve developed already in the space.”
In Canada BBC Advertising is working with American Express and in Europe Paramount Pictures. Gibson said: “We’ve been able to create quite innovative content around a subject that appeals broadly to people interested in technology or innovation, so actually it’s quite interesting for us to broach subjects in a slightly different way.”
This could be in the form of a short video, specifically commissioned for Twitter for example, or uploads to apps, he said.
Local sales boss McEwan said: “The best form of any native solution is one where the consumer is really pleased to either read or view that piece of content and believes it sits naturally within its environment, within an editorial stream or a video stream, and understands the link between the brand and the subject matter. That’s when it’s most successful.”
With a dedicated audience of 60m users worldwide and 2.7m in Australia, BBC.com has an audience of millions through its various brands on Twitter and BBC News is the top source of international news in Australia.
“Really its about creativity with brands and working up ideas from the brand up and seeing where that matches with content,” he said.
“We want to be able to create content that the users want to read and value, and that’s when it’s most beneficial for brands to be aligned with that content.”
The BBC has also just completed extensive research with Millward Brown into how users access content and what they are reading, set to be released in the coming weeks.
This will help inform the re-launch of its BBC Earth vertical on BBC.com in September, with the proposition of launching a BBC Earth channel launch also in the works.
Last year BBC took the decision to launch subscription TV channel BBC First on Foxtel, moving its drama and comedy content to premium subscribers, marking a change in strategy from going for the biggest audience by disseminating content through multiple channels to building viewers’ relationship with the brand. The move meant the end of many BBC shows for the ABC.
Megan Reynolds
Native advertising?? Shouldn’t that be “indigenous advertising”?
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Hmmm a bit tricky when it’s the BBC, a UK tax payer funded organisation?
Ukraine riots sponsored by Heckler & Koch or Pakistan coverage sponsored by Lockheed Martin.
Maybe some Buzzfeed style sh1t:
21 best Apache helicopter attacks you never watched brought to you by Boeing
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BBC Worldwide sits outside the normal commercial constraints that the UK tax-payer funded model does, which is why you see ads on your BBC News sites over here, yet can’t access any of their broadcast content online like you would back in blightly. But yes, tricky topic for them to safeguard editorial integrity. The very concept is a contradiction in terms and savvy BBC reader purists (of which there are many) will no-doubt notice the difference between the content types.
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