the bigger picture

Apart from those who work in advertising, very few people actually seek out adverts.

When people choose to interact with a piece of branded content, it’s because they’re looking for something else, such as entertainment or information.

There’s a reason millions of people have actively chosen to watch this clip:

But adverts are rarely the only source of the content that people are looking for.

So we need to see what we do in the appropriate context.

Analysing share of advertising spend is flawed, because people don’t have a separate pool of attention just for adverts.

Branded content has to compete with everything else that can deliver the same benefit.

As Ted Royer from droga5 points out, we’re up against cute animals and the weirdly compelling video of the skateboarder getting it all wrong.

We need to reward people for their attention, otherwise they won’t even notice us.