Ekstra Bladet: Native video content sometimes outdoes news video
World Congress Blog | 07 November 2016
Ekstra Bladet started its native video initiative in 2014: “Last year, 2015, was a good year, but this year, it took off,” Morten Blichmann, development manager at Ekstra Bladet, said at the INMA World Congress in London. “We’ve been running around 25 projects with different kinds of advertisers.”
Two years in, what results has the news media company seen?
“In the beginning, we were a little afraid that since it’s sponsored content ... that our users wouldn’t click and watch. But they are. And actually what we have seen is that when we make the right and engaging content, some of it actually clicks better and has view click-though rates higher than our normal editorial content.”
One example is a partnership with a leading dating company in Denmark, dating.dk. The video series had a good number of views considering the small population of the country.
“What we found is that when we have the right content, it doesn’t matter if it’s branded or what it is, our users will engage with it.”
Hiring the right people with the right ideas is key to a native video strategy, Blichmann says: “[People] who can transform a challenge of a brand to an idea and a concept for a programme. That’s very very important to have creative people inside the sales department to work with ideas and concepts.
“And then hook them up with the right people ... who know about marketing and branding, and also people who know about content production at your Web site, who know how to tell stories in a ‘native’ way.”