What Is Content Advertising, and Should You Be Doing It?

As an industry, digital marketing moves fast – really fast. Tools, apps, and technologies that were indispensable just a few years ago have now become obsolete, and marketers in every sector and vertical are constantly looking for new ways to reach their audiences.

Content Advertising

Unfortunately, this break-neck pace also means that digital marketing has more than its fair share of irritating buzzwords and industry jargon. (Remember SoLoMo? Yeah.) Some of these terms are worse than annoying: they’re confusing, potentially misleading, and often used as little more than a cheap way to appear knowledgeable in pitch decks.

Sometimes, though, you come across a buzzword that piques your interest – like “content advertising.” I recently came across this term in a blog post, and since then, I’ve been looking into content advertising and whether or not we should pay attention.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What Is Content Advertising?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the precise definition of content advertising is difficult to pin down. To complicate matters, a lot of people are (understandably) confusing content advertising with content marketing. And native advertising. And content strategy.

My head hurts.

Although the concept of content advertising is relatively new, the basic idea is simple:

Content advertising is the process of producing content with the intention of promoting that content through paid distribution channels. This can include PPC campaigns, paid social, sponsored placements, and any other type of paid promotional opportunities.

Content advertising Google AdWords concept illustration

Any content format can be produced as part of a content advertising campaign. For example, you could create a whitepaper focusing on a problem common to customers in your industry, with the intention of promoting this whitepaper through paid social ads. As long as the content being produced is to be promoted via paid distribution, you’re using content advertising.

Content Advertising vs. Content Marketing

We all know that there are plenty of benefits of content marketing, but how does content advertising differ from “traditional” content marketing? In the grand scheme of things, the concept of content advertising should be something of a misnomer. After all, content marketing is a core element of inbound marketing, which itself is designed to be as minimally disruptive to consumers as possible. Traditional advertising, on the other hand, is often intentionally disruptive, designed to capture the attention of viewers and entice them to take action.

One element that both content marketing and content advertising share, however, is an emphasis on quality. Just because you’re distributing and promoting your content through paid channels doesn’t mean that the content itself should be any less valuable to your audience as your “organic” content. If anything, the quality bar should be even higher, since you’re paying to promote that content.

Content advertising quality not quantity

Additionally, just because you’re promoting content via paid channels doesn’t mean you should resort to sleazy, disruptive tactics favored by TV and radio advertisers – your audience expects (and deserves) better. This can dissuade prospective customers and tarnish your brand, even if your content is of high quality.

Another crucial difference between content marketing and content advertising is that content marketing campaigns often rely on SEO and organic rankings, whereas content advertising bypasses the challenges of declining organic reach by leveraging the strengths of paid promotional channels, such as highly granular audience segmentation.