Here are just a few of the key highlights from the conversations:

• Branded content delivers better ROI in the longer-term, but you need to invest in building strong partnerships with advertisers to really see the benefits. However, once you’ve got your foot in the door, branded content also acts as a Trojan Horse to help publishers bring in more revenue to other areas.
• Advertising budgets are decreasing. We need to make sure that branded content is baked in at the start of the media strategy by educating clients about the power of storytelling. When the partnership is at the heart of the campaign with the advertising ecosystem then built around that, it’s harder to cut the budgets.
• The best branded storytelling is collaborative storytelling. If you can find the intersection between your editorial insights and values and the objectives and expertise of your clients, that’s where branded content really starts to shine.
• We need more cooperation between commercial and editorial. If sales teams arrive to meetings with a few editorial ideas in their back pocket, they can inspire clients to consider new partnerships and bring content on to the agenda.
• Look at your big projects work to see if there are opportunities for brands to partner with you and then raise those with agencies. Advertisers are most excited about partnerships where editorial are already invested in the project as they get more benefit from the soft values surrounding the content – but they can’t get involved if they don’t know that it’s happening.

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