The Marketing Economy

Blogger Compensation: How Much is a Sponsored Post Worth?

August 6, 2014 by Susan Getgood

Cross-posted on BlogHer

Disclosure: I am Vice President, Sales Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

BlogHer 2014. We just celebrated the 10th anniversary of a little conference held to tell the world: Here are the women who blog.

Many things have changed in the social media landscape since July 2005. But a constant, at least in my little corner, is that social media offers consumers an opportunity to have a voice about the products and services they buy. To share their customer experiences (good or ill). To actively participate in the marketing cycle as endorsers of the brands they love. Preferably compensated.

Compensation. That’s our topic today. What should a blogger be paid for a sponsored post? How much is that tweet worth?

In my job at BlogHer, I lead the teams that create and execute our custom sponsored programs. Blogger payment is a topic that we address on a daily basis, and I shared some of our practices in a Business Fundamentals session about monetization in a session during the conference.

Here’s the gist.

Task + Reach + Performance = Fee

The baseline for payment for a sponsored blog post is the task.

What are we asking the blogger to do?
- Simple post? Cover an event? Develop a recipe? Create a Craft or DIY How-To? Produce a UGC video? Participate in a custom video program? Is travel involved?
Does the blogger have special or unique expertise?
How many hours will this take? At a reasonable hourly rate?

Then we factor in reach, both monthly blog pageviews and overall social reach on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. If you’ve ever wondered why some bloggers get paid more than others for similar work (whether from BlogHer or another network or social media/pr agency), your answer starts with reach. Absent other data (and more about that in a moment), potential reach is the most common proxy for influence.

Influencers with more scale can get higher fees. Usually. But sometimes the program just doesn’t have the budget. We don’t mind if bloggers ask for more if a program appeals to them but the fee seems low. Just as long as they aren’t offended if the answer is no.

But task and potential reach are not end game. They are a good start, but end game is results. The more a blogger is able to link back to actual results achieved for brands, the better fees she can command for future work.

Bottom line: Size matters. Influence matters more. Results matter most.

We’ve been doing sponsor programs since 2008, and have accumulated quite a bit of data on typical results. We use this data to predict program performance when calculating our guaranteed results for sponsored programs. Key measurements include number of post page views, both absolute and as a percentage of monthly traffic, total comments, earned social shares/pins, and clicks to sponsor site.

Starting later this summer, we will be sharing this proprietary data with the bloggers in our sponsored programs. Via their private BlogHer profiles, they will be able to see how their own posts are performing and better understand how their posts and social sharing contribute to a program’s success. We will also share historical benchmark data so they can measure their performance. Eventually, and we will give our bloggers plenty of notice, we will be using this results data in our fee calculations. Task and reach will always matter, but historical results will be a factor. This should be particularly welcome news to mid-size bloggers with loyal audiences that read and engage with multiple posts every month; these “magic middle” blogs should compare quite favorably to much larger blogs that get a big chunk of their traffic from one-time search engine visitors.

Exciting times. And more to come.

Shining a Light on the Native Advertising Debate

January 20, 2014 by Susan Getgood

Disclosure: I am Vice President, Influencer Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

In December, the FTC held a workshop on Native Advertising, the practice of embedding/including advertising messages in editorial spaces. Prompted by concerns that publishers are not disclosing sufficient information to consumers, the workshop was mostly focused on native advertising on publishers’ sites and portals. Although there are some implications for sponsored content on independent blogs, there was nothing in this workshop that replaced or changes the endorsement guidelines updated in 2009.

The FTC regularly holds public workshops to discuss and document the points of view on a topic for which they might issue a regulation. Nothing really new comes to light, but the workshops are a good way to understand the current market thinking on a topic. How it works in a nutshell:

Participants file a public comment on the matter with the FTC in order to be “invited” to the workshop (and not all are given speaking slots).
During the workshop, the participants clarify and defend these previously established positions.
Often participating organizations time related press announcement to the workshop date to maximize the reach of their point of view. For example, the IAB released its Native Advertising Playbook on December 4th, the day of the workshop.
Following the workshop, the FTC may (or may not) eventually issue regulatory guidelines.

If you aren’t on the hot seat, FTC Workshops are excellent policy wonk theater. From the coverage, this one did not disappoint. Seen on Twitter, largely paraphrasing commentary by columnist Bob Garfield:

raju: “We are all trying to make money” Yes, but with a “boatload of shit.” Arguments fly in US @FTC hearing on #NativeAds bitly.com/1bid3ie

sulliview: “A conspiracy of deception. A hustle. A racket. A grift.” And other kind words for native advertising:adage.com/article/media/… h/t @raju

If you were looking for a conclusion or a ruling, though, you would definitely be disappointed at the outcome (to-date) of the workshop. As is often the case, FTC workshops end with everyone realizing just how a) far apart the various protagonists/antagonists are on the issues and b) how confusing the topic is, both organically and as manufactured by the protagonists and antagonists.

Among other issues, the different players in the online media industry are using the term “native advertising” to mean multiple, often disparate things. Many of which already existed in somewhat similar form, online and off. At best, this makes conclusions about concrete action difficult for the regulators. At worst, it makes it obvious that sometimes the lack of clarity is deliberately intended to confuse consumers about the paid nature of the content and implied endorsement. Online and offline, sometimes it is just hard tell where the editorial ends and the advertising begins. Blurred lines (the name of the FTC workshop) indeed, and certainly why the FTC intends to keep a sharp eye on native advertising in the coming year.

I’m watching the ongoing debate with some interest. In part because HULLO ethics policy wonk here! but also because these discussions about native advertising impact my work with brands and influencers at BlogHer. We’ve been doing sponsored content for years, both on BlogHer.com and on the blogs of our Advertising Network members, and have long been a proponent of clear and prominent disclosure of sponsored relationships, even before the revised FTC endorsement guidelines.

Sponsored posts are considered a form of native advertising. I’d argue that sponsored posts are the original native advertising, and many of the newer portal- and publisher- based forms are attempts to mimic the word-of-mouth potential of an authentic influencer endorsement. Other native ads are advertorials that blur the lines between the native editorial of a publisher — the magazine content — and advertising. For example, did the sponsor simply fund the space, and the article was written with the usual editorial objectivity of the publisher, or did the advertiser place the article fully written? Both types of post have their place in the content ecology, but sponsorship and in the case of my example, the level and degree of sponsorship, must be disclosed so consumers can make an informed decision.

On one side of this debate, we have the advertising and publishing industry that wants to expand the opportunities to reach consumers with marketing messages. And on the other, we have the watchdogs who are concerned that consumers aren’t getting adequate information upon which to base their decisions.

No one denies the need for disclosure. The sticking point seems to be what is an acceptable, meaningful disclosure.

We are arguing about the wrong thing. We are having a debate when we should be having a conversation. And not about the best way to disclose. Shaded boxes versus color cues, or whether we call something an ad, advertorial or sponsored, trap us in the minutiae of old media models.

One of the most interesting topics discussed during the workshop was a study conducted by the McCarthy Institute for IP and Technology Law. Among other things the study found that 50% of respondents did not know what sponsored advertising meant. The study also suggested that consumers don’t care that much. Reported website emedia|vitals:

One question looms even larger than how publishers label the native ads that run on their site: Do consumers care? One-third of respondents in the McCarthy Institute study said they are not concerned about the difference between ads and editorial and that they would actually be more likely to click on something they think is an ad.

“So the important baseline question is, what are we protecting the consumer from?” asked Franklyn [McCarthy Institute Director David Franklyn]. “A growing number of consumers enjoy the hyperstimulation of the work that advertisers and publishers do. They don’t care whether it’s paid or unpaid – they may just want to be entertained.”

Should consumers care? Does it matter? It seems that consumers aren’t nearly as fussed about whether a message is paid or unpaid as long as they can trust its credibility and the message is relevant and interesting. This shouldn’t surprise us — it is the foundation upon which social media, and social media marketing, is built. That said, it is extremely important to note that while the consumer may not care whether an endorsement is paid or not, it is still vital that she know whether it was paid or not. Without disclosure, there is no foundation for the trust upon which social media engagement relies.

Trust and Relevance.

Rather than get bogged down making advertising look like editorial because we think it increases its trust value if it looks “native,” let’s take a deep breath and realize that the consumer doesn’t care whether it is paid, owned or earned. Shareability is the new social currency.

I have written about this before so I am no less guilty of using the FTC workshop as a soapbox than any of the participants. But it bears repeating: Developing a story so good that consumers are driven to share is the real goal. It’s not an either/or — either you use paid media OR you use earned media OR you use owned media.The best marketing strategies rely on all three tactics.

Shared Media: Social’s New Currency
Source: BlogHer

And don’t shortchange disclosure in an attempt to make the message more appealing. It’s not necessary, and when you do so, you begin your relationship with your customer based on a lie. And really, that never works out well. In life or in business.

Matching the social platform to the marketing objective

December 31, 2013 by Susan Getgood

Matching the social platform used in a marketing campaign to the marketing objective of the campaign is the first step of successful strategy. Yet, all too often, early adopters rush to the shiny new object, regardless of whether it is the right choice for the specific need. And on the extreme opposite of the spectrum, risk averse marketers wait. And wait. Until all the proof is in, and any opportunity for first (or even second) mover advantage is lost.

We want to aim for the middle ground – to be in the right place for our audience with the right message at the right time.

Let’s break it down.

Right platform? Consider the social platform in the context of your marketing objectives. Is the platform conducive to your marketing need?

Blogs: The deep content on blogs drives readers through to consideration and often purchase. More than 85% of the BlogHer audience has purchased a product based on a recommendation from a blog (BlogHer Social Media Matters 2012).
Pinterest: Its curated content with aspirational and inspirational appeal acts as long term consideration sets for consumers.
Facebook: Personal connections pique interest and foster consideration.
Twitter: Broad amplification drives awareness

The Social Purchasing Funnel
Image Source: BlogHer marketing materials

Right time? Is your audience actively using the social platform? If your customers aren’t actively using a social platform, it doesn’t matter that it is the hot new thing. It is not the hot new thing for your brand. Continue to monitor, but move on, at least for now, for your overall marketing strategy. If you sense potential for the platform, be vigilant for an inflection point – that moment when enough of your audience is actively using the platform for it to be potentially useful in your marketing strategy. Maybe even test it with small pilot projects, but don’t expect any ROI from these pilots other than knowledge about the platform and your customer base. You are asking for failure if you expect your pilot project to deliver significant sales results.

Right message? Is your audience receptive to hearing about or engaging with your brand on this social channel? That they might not want to talk about your product doesn’t mean they might not engage with your company on related topics, but be honest about what you are bringing to the online conversation. Some advice I wrote in 2008 about the secret sauce for a perfect blog pitch might prove useful in this exercise.

You should spend at least as much time thinking about WHAT you want them to say/do, HOW you want them to react and engage with your brand, as you do slicing and dicing the demographics. More really, but I’ll settle for equal time to start. The social platform may be perfect and your audience ready and willing to engage with you, but if your message is forced and inauthentic, it will at best fall flat. At worst, you’ll understand the dark side of “viral” which is far closer to the real world meaning of the word than the sentiment behind the oft-repeated mantra of the social era: <clueless enthusiasm> let’s hope our story goes viral !</clueless enthusiasm>

Spend the time to sanity check your message and your ask, against the audience and the platform, and once you get started, monitor the community reaction closely and adjust as necessary. Spelling your name right is not a good substitute for positive brand awareness and corporate goodwill.

Defining content marketing, native advertising and engagement

July 16, 2013 by Susan Getgood

Content marketing. Native advertising. Engagement.

These, my friends, are the buzzwords du jour. And there seem to be as many definitions OF them as there are letters IN them. Every publisher, every social network defines them in the context of their offer, their platform — what they are able to deliver to the advertiser.

Which is of relatively little use to the brand marketer trying to compare these disparate offerings and make decisions among them. In order to do that, you have to strip away the bells and whistles of the digital platforms and properties to get to a simple common definition of WHAT these things are. In other words, get to the apples to apples of things first, and then look at the embellishments offered by each platform/publisher.

To help us out, here are my simple definitions.

Content Marketing

Content marketing isn’t exactly new. In fact, it’s as old as the first testimonial, and I’m sure if we looked hard enough we could find that in the Bible. Not to start a religious war or anything but some might say that the Bible itself was an early form of content marketing. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Turn of the (20th) century woman’s literature.

Content marketing is storytelling used to persuade. Prior to the modern age, it was more often and obviously used for ideas, but first person testimony has been used for products since the very first marketplaces.

The digital form offers some twists that we don’t find in Paine, Genesis or turn-of-the century pamphlets for this or that medicine.

In digital, content marketing is far more overtly used for products. Sponsored content on blogs, consumer resource sites sponsored by brands, brand sponsored Pinterest boards and Facebook Pages. Even content driven advertising. Format doesn’t matter – editorial, testimonial, advertorial, advertising –as much as the simple notion that there is intrinsic value in the content. In other words, I don’t have to buy the product to get some value.

The value in the content independent of its role as a branded or brand sponsored message is what drives sharing. In the digital sphere, we can track and measure that sharing, and use that information to tweak our tale, adjust our strategy. A real-time option definitely not available to Mr. Paine. It took him years and an occasional stint in Parisian prisons to get his feedback.

Native Advertising

It’s no secret that I find this term unnecessary. It’s a buzzword in search of a unique meaning.

In some circles, it means an advertising message (of any length) delivered in the “native” format of the platform. This can be anything from a Facebook post or a tweet, to a brand logo perched on a blog post a la BuzzFeed. Even a brand-written advertorial “guest posted” in a blogger’s editorial space. The term can also be expanded to include all forms of sponsored content, even that which is not 100% controlled by the brand.

My question has always been – why do we even need the term? We have perfectly good terms — advertising, editorial, advertorial, content and sponsored content. Advertising is a message developed and controlled by a brand. Editorial is a message developed and controlled by the author or publisher. Advertorial is a blend of the two, and strictly speaking only should be applied to editorial-like content developed and controlled by the advertiser, although you will find it applied to independently written sponsored posts.

Collectively, digitally, all of these things can be considered content. Yes, even advertising. And when a brand sponsors and informs it, we call it sponsored content. So why exactly do we need the term native advertising?

I suppose underlying the rise of and desire for the term is the idea that native somehow makes it better. The thought process must be something like this: “Native. That’s like organic, right? So it MUST be better.”

Poppycock.

There’s nothing wrong with advertising. It serves its purpose in the marketing mix, as do all the other tools in the toolbox.

Engagement.

Simple right? Engagement is the measure of consumer interaction with the brand message. It’s an action – reading a blog post, retweeting or sharing a Facebook post, pinning an image.

Engagement is not exposure.

Exposure to a message is important, additive and critical. Without exposure, there is no possibility of engagement, and we know that repeated exposures increase likelihood of eventual purchase. Understanding the potential exposures to our message is the crucial base for a concrete action based model for engagement.

With advertising, we buy impressions but evaluate the success of our programs on click-through. In social, we acquire exposures (paid or earned, it really doesn’t matter) and evaluate the success based on actual consumer engagement with the message – by reading content, clicking through to a site, entering a sweepstakes, pinning an image, retweeting and so on.

This is all moving toward models that are predictive of sales, or at minimum can be used to forecast with some degree of accuracy. We aren’t there yet, and even when we are, it will never be perfect. Things that involve people never are totally predictable, but the more we understand what works to move the needle — what is effective — the more efficient we can be with our marketing spend.

One tactic that will help in this mission is to design engagements — actions — that move the consumer along the sales funnel. For example, instead of simply collecting an opt-in email address for more information on your micro-site, develop an interactive widget that helps the consumer understand which of your products might fit her best, or provides use scenarios that she can try on for size. Whenever possible, engage your customer actively, not passively.

And that’s it for today’s vocabulary lesson. What popular industry terms and jargon do you think could stand a little deconstruction? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

The Marketing Economy: Why advertising still matters in a social media, word-of-mouth world

April 15, 2013 by Susan Getgood

Anyone who knows me, even a little, knows how passionate I am about word-of-mouth marketing and the amazing potential of the voice of the customer (blogger or simply happy camper) to move the needle for brands. It’s part of my professional DNA, and was even before the advent of social media. Back then we called them testimonials and put them in case studies and adverts, but the principle was the same. People like to hear from real people.

My passion for tapping into real voices, real stories is one of the reasons I joined BlogHer nearly three years ago. As part of this team, I am able to help connect brands and bloggers in mutually beneficial ways more than I ever could as a solo independent consultant.

No one is more passionate than I am about the real stories about life and about brands revealed by social content every day.

But I still believe in advertising. Just as passionately.

Saying that the digital banner is “dead” or no longer relevant in today’s marketplace is premature. The banner is only dead if we let it be so, and if we do, shame on “us.” The marketing economy needs advertising just as much as it needs public relations and word-of-mouth marketing and sponsored content and direct response and every other element of the marketing mix. For a number of reasons.

First, consumers need and want to hear directly from companies about their products. Advertising is the most efficient way to reach a lot of people at a relatively low cost; the company can deliver a consistent controlled message to exactly the audience it wants to reach. Keep in mind — it is not that consumers don’t like ads; it’s that we don’t like BAD ads.

It’s incumbent upon the industry to develop creative, compelling digital ads that help brands move the needle. Should ads use more social content? Sometimes, and the IAB has addressed this with new units like the Portait (one of the Rising Stars). But abandoning the digital banner in favor of “native advertising” (whatever that is, and more on that in a moment) is a fatal error that will destroy the balance of the marketing economy. We need both.

Here’s the thing. Whatever you call it — “native advertising” or sponsored content (my preference) — it relies on the existence of publishing vehicles, whether mainstream media sites like Mashable and Forbes, or independent publishers like the bloggers in the BlogHer Publishing Network. And without advertising revenue, these publishers will be in a world of hurt. Why? Sponsored content revenue is active revenue; the publisher has to create this content, and that costs. Time at best, and in the case of larger publishers, money too. Advertising revenue is passive, and scales easily.

Bottom line, without advertising revenue, the blogs we depend on for word-of-mouth marketing might not exist. It’s no different than the long ago print days, when I managed marketing for tech firms; our policy was that if we believed a publication was appropriate for our press releases, we would at least consider it for our advertising dollars. Sometimes we just couldn’t afford the rates but we understood that the publications we relied on, relied upon advertising to pay their bills.

It is no different for bloggers.

Before I move on to my final point about why advertising matters in the social marketing economy, I want to address the term “native advertising.” I wholeheartedly agree with Lori Luechtefeld, the author of recent iMedia Connection article, Why “native advertising” must die. She points out that we already have terms for the acceptable activities usually bundled under the term native advertising — to whit, sponsored content and advertorial –so why do we need a new term? The third concept, the misdirection, or deliberate masking of the advertising nature of the content, is a betrayal of consumer trust. She writes:

“But that third manifestation of native advertising? The Misdirection? If marketers and publishers have coined the phrase “native advertising” with the hope of legitimizing practices like that, then we’re all in deep shit. That’s a battle that reputable publications have been fighting since the dawn of journalism, and for good reason. If you blur the line — especially intentionally — between editorial and advertising, you will lose reader trust. And then you’ll lose readers. And then it’s pretty much over.”

Not to mention, this sort of misdirection would be a flagrant violation of the FTC Guidelines for Endorsements and Testimonials.

Finally, in the social marketing economy, we need to stop worrying about whether content is paid owned or earned. What matters is whether it is shareable. Likewise, we need to get rid of “viral” as the Holy Grail of social marketing. In the real world, viruses are BAD, and by and large, when it comes to corporate content, bad news spreads far faster than the good. What we need to focus on is creating compelling content that speaks to our consumers, not at them. That they will want to share. That’s what creates the “network effect” we are looking for when we say we want our content to go viral.

What we really want is for our customers to share our story with their friends, whether they first saw it in an ad, or on our website or Facebook page, or in sponsored content on a blog or the social graph.

Or all three.

Because isn’t that what REALLY moves the needle, when our customers are engaging with us across multiple platforms, in multiple ways. It’s not about a single click-through. It’s the cumulative effect of all the ways the consumer can engage with us in the balanced marketing economy.

Ads are part of that, and we need their storytelling just as much as we need blogs and editorial, Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, and whatever comes next.