lead media partner, their ability to offer
VR came last, named by less than 3% of
respondents. In fact, top of the list at 72%
was the provision of a credible editorial
environment, followed by quality of
audience engagement at 65% and audience
profile at 63%.
CONTENT SURVEY
Engagement Metrics Are Still
Viewed As Less Important Than
Traditional Brand Measures
Alex Delamain is the newly appointed
President of the World Media Group and
SVP, Head of Client Sales and Services
at The Economist. Commenting on the
survey results, Delamain said, “The fact
that advertisers and agencies expect
investment in content-driven marketing
to grow reflects our own experience at the
World Media Awards where we have seen
a rise in the number and quality of entries
we receive every year.
By Susan Perolls
T
he World Media Group, a strategic
alliance of the world’s leading
media brands whose members
include The Atlantic, Bloomberg Media
Group, The Economist, Forbes, Fortune,
National Geographic, Reuters, The New
York Times, Time, The Wall Street
Journal and The Washington Post,
recently conducted a survey into content-
led marketing. survey to provide context for its annual
World Media Awards, which celebrate the
best in cross-border, cross-channel content
campaigns and are now in their fourth year.
The findings demonstrated that 49% of all
respondents believe ‘brand engagement’
is content’s key strength, rising to 60%
amongst advertisers. This was significantly
higher than ‘changing perceptions’ at 28%
and ‘building awareness at 17%.
The results revealed that although
marketers are most likely to be using
content-driven campaigns for brand
engagement, they are not using
engagement metrics as their primary
KPIs. The respondents were made up
of key influencers across advertisers,
agencies, media brands and consultants. However, despite this it appears that
marketers across the board are not
yet focused on evaluating content
campaigns against engagement metrics
and are still favouring more traditional
ad measurements as KPIs. In fact, 26%
of respondents cited increased brand
awareness as the main KPI they used
to measure their most recent campaign,
followed by measuring shifts in brand
The World Media Group carried out the
When drilled further on what factors
contribute most to a campaign’s success
once the story has been created, 66% of
respondents said that matching the en-
vironment or platform to the audience
was the single biggest contributor. The
second highest scoring factor was brand
alignment, meaning that the content has
to make sense for the brand or product.
Third on the list was ‘content with rich
legs’, meaning content that is ‘evergreen’
and therefore stays relevant for a long
time.
42 MAL28/19 ISSUE
perception at 25%. The first engagement
metric came in third place with ‘time
spent with content’ being used by 20% of
respondents as their main KPI.
But what is really interesting is that
marketers are recognising the impact of
quality journalism on content campaigns.
This sentiment matches independent
research carried out by Moat last year which
confirmed that readers display higher
attention levels when viewing content
within a trusted editorial environment.”
The good news for marketers is that
content-driven marketing will continue
its ascendancy with 78% of respondents
(and 85% of agencies) believing it would
grow over the next two years. 18% of
respondents thought that market for
content driven marketing would stabilise
and only 5% felt that it would decline.
It’s likely that the higher number amongst
agencies is due to the fact that they have
been later to market in developing their
own brand studios and so are looking to
drive more growth in the area. However
they will have to work much harder as the
market becomes increasingly cluttered.
Overall, a whopping 45% of respondents
said that more than 50% of the campaigns
they work on are now content-driven.
The survey revealed that getting the
environment or platform right is biggest
contributor to a campaign’s success.
Seventy-one percent of respondents said
story was the most important factor when
creating a content-led campaign, followed
by authenticity at 62%, and creative
execution at 38%.
However, when drilled further on what
factors contribute most to a campaign’s
success once the story has been created,
66% of respondents said that matching the
environment or platform to the audience
was the single biggest contributor. The
second highest scoring factor was brand
alignment, meaning that the content has
to make sense for the brand or product.
Third on the list was ‘content with rich
legs’, meaning content that is ‘evergreen’
and therefore stays relevant for a long
time.
When asked about upcoming trends
respondents cited short form video as
the biggest trend for content over the
next 12 months, with 69% of respondents
predicting they would be using it more
frequently. One of the reasons for this
trend, most likely, stems from a bid to
improve completion rates.
The results revealed
that although mar-
keters are most
likely to be using
content-driven cam-
paigns for brand en-
gagement, they are
not using engage-
ment metrics as their
primary KPIs.
However, it will prove challenging for
agencies and media brands who are tasked
with building compelling and engaging
stories in under 60 seconds. In fact, some
say this tackles consumer engagement
in the wrong way, and a better solution
would be to create more informative and
entertaining content to increase audience
engagement.
Looking at other trends, 58% of
respondents predicted that there would
be an increase in editorial style content;
and 56% expected to increase their use of
social media posts.
When it came to the content marketing
trend that most excited respondents, it
was VR (virtual reality)/AR (augmented
reality) that received the highest
number of mentions, followed by audio/
podcast/voice-related content and the
opportunities afforded by personalisation,
strategy and data.
However,
the
excitement
around
visualisation techniques like VR appears to
be far ahead of reality. When asked about
the factors to look for when selecting a
But not every content campaign is a
success. While the World Media Awards
are looking for entries from campaigns
that are at the pinnacle of content-led,
cross-border campaigns, at the other end
of the scale it is interesting to look at who
is seen to be at fault when campaigns fail
to deliver.
It seems that in this case, no-one want
to shoulder the blame; in fact everyone
blames everyone else when a campaigns
goes wrong! For advertisers the blame lies
predominantly in failings with the creative
(32%). However, agencies point the finger
at poor strategy (30%) and lack of media
support (22%), while media brands see the
fault also lying in poor strategy (37%) or
being given a bad brief (21%).
The World Media Group is a strategic
alliance of the world’s leading publications.
Its aim is to promote award-winning
journalism and the role of international
media.
Susan Perolls works with Loud Mouth
PR. You can commune with her on
this or related matters vide email at:
[email protected].