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Remember when you’d run to the toilet during a TV ad break, sliding back onto the lounge just in time for your favourite show? Or perhaps you’d tape your weekly series so you could fast-forward through the pesky ads?
While we might have replaced the VCR with slightly more advanced tech devices, the desire to ‘skip the ads’ has never been stronger. Here, Avid Collective ANZ partnerships lead Jade Scales shares her insights into how to create branded content that engages, rather than enrages.
Today’s viewing audience is more discerning than ever – and, put simply, they’re tired of ads. They’re weary of being interrupted, they can smell inauthentic content from a mile away and they’re tuning out faster than ever.
This presents a critical problem for advertisers and a veritable crossroads for the industry. While global ad spend is expected to surge past $US1 trillion globally by 2026, nearly $US100 billion will be wasted on ineffective ads that fail to keep up with changing consumer behaviour.
Intrusive advertising is on the decline. According to Hubspot, 91 percent of people find ads to be more intrusive than two years ago. And frankly, they’re over it. They’ve become increasingly indifferent, often actively adverse to annoying ads, and it’s created a trust dilemma for brands and advertisers.
How to engage, not enrage
All of this means marketers need new strategies and ways to reach and engage audiences, and for many, the answer lies in branded content.
While still designed to function as an ad, branded content is tailored to fit seamlessly into a publisher’s format and environment to create genuine advocacy, meeting audiences where they are without interrupting the flow of the user experience
Branded content is not about competing for advertising space by yelling even louder, but engaging in a completely different way – by delivering brand messages that feel more like stories than sales pitches.
From advertorial articles and edu-tainment social posts to TikTok product reviews, face-to-face camera videos and podcast integrations, branded content works because the focus is less on the sell and more on the story.
Branded content is all about authenticity, creating campaigns that foster a genuine connection.
By partnering with trusted publishers, brands are able to create moments that deeply resonate, building trust and engagement that is more impactful than a sponsored ad delivered mid-feed.
To drive real impact with branded content, the purpose behind a campaign must guide every aspect of its execution. Understanding why the content is being created should shape how it’s developed, ensuring the strategy speaks directly to audience needs and challenges.
It’s this strategy that underpinned a campaign for a popular Queensland tourist town, the Gold Coast. Destination Gold Coast needed to shift perceptions of the region, moving it beyond its reputation with SINKS and DINKS as a party town or family holiday spot to a region with a vibrant dining scene, stunning wilderness and a diverse range of activities. But how to unpack all the goodness of the Gold Coast to people who’ve always known it as Movie World, Schoolies and sun tans? A strategic, audience-focused, branded content campaign that focused on reshaping perceptions to drive real impact Destination Gold Coast leveraged publisher partnerships and strong storytelling to shift tourists’ thinking, contributing to an increased visitation spend of $2 million over three years.
Because branded content is uniquely opt-in, it overcomes many of the hurdles presented by traditional and intrusive advertising.
Amid consumers who are actively turning off ads, branded content drives greater audience attention, attracting more eyes for more time. When most ads secure less than one second of active attention, today’s customer needs a reason to keep reading, keep watching, to click through to a website. Branded content is built to captivate – and the longer your audience pays attention, the more likely they are to build positive memory structures.
The trust dilemma
People are overwhelmingly sceptical – corporations and advertisers are now among the least trusted institutions globally, presenting an uphill battle for brands keen to break through the noise. Branded content puts an ad in a trusted context – the publisher. Data shows audiences trust content in a publisher context 15 times more than on traditional digital channels. Brands can lean into a publisher’s credibility to create authentic content, leveraging their trusted voice to resonate with readers and increase favourability.
Don’t be irrelevant
Today, ads that lack relevance aren’t just ignored – they’re actively avoided. According to GWI, more than a third of internet users use ad blockers so they don’t have to see content that’s irrelevant to them. Even the marketers are over it, with two-thirds of them confessing that they, too, use ad blockers, according to WARC. So how do brands reach audiences who’ve already decided they don’t offer them any value? The answer lies in understanding the consumer mindset and delivering content when your audience is most receptive. By ensuring your branded content speaks to the audience’s needs, advertisers can drive stronger engagement and action.
Deliver ‘edu-tainment’ for a true value-add
Customer expectations are at an all-time high, particularly when it comes to their preferred retailers. Shoppers are looking for brands that do more than just sell products – they want to be engaged with advertising that educates, inspires and entertains. We’ve seen the rise of ‘edu-tainment’ in campaigns – the melding of education and entertainment to offer rich, informative content. Branded content has the ability to deliver information in a well-structured, interesting way, supporting advertisers’ goals while also fostering strong brand relationships.
All the feels
Emotion is a powerful driver of brand impact – and it’s difficult to conjure in an intrusive, pop-up ad. Branded content gives advertisers an unparalleled ability to create emotive, human-centered stories that deeply resonate with audiences and connect with them in a meaningful way that they enjoy
Beloved cereal brand Coco Pops leveraged its emotional connection with Aussies to engage adults who’d grown up eating the cereal, along with a new generation of breakfast fans.
Partnering with leading Australian publishers Marion’s Kitchen and Urban List, Coco Pops tapped into the deep nostalgia for the brand, using content that reignited consumers’ existing love for the chocolatey cereal, while reinforcing it as a product to enjoy and share with family.
Relevant, audience-focused content was key, meeting consumers in the moment they were actively looking for new food ideas, with new Coco Pops recipes (no-bake Coco Pops cheesecake anyone?), making it part of their everyday routines. The brand harnessed Marion’s Kitchen’s highly engaged, recipe-focused audience, while using its Urban List partnership to reach Millennial audiences.
The result was unmatched engagement and time spent with consumers – the campaign achieved more than 146,000 article views and 1.5 million video views, with dwell times well over benchmarks for all publishers.
It’s just one example of how branded content is changing the advertising game and unlocking meaningful engagement in a world full of ad fatigue.
Avid Collective is a Sydney-based branded content creation agency. Working with some of the largest publishers and platforms in Australia and beyond, including eBay, Netflix, OMD and New Zealand Tourism, their work enables high-quality branded content through greater access, efficiency, impact and scale.
