In a guest column for InPublishing, director at the7stars Helen Rose talks about the biggest trends in news brand advertising effectiveness from her experience as a 2024 Newsworks Awards judge
“It’s clear that news brands are as important and relevant now as they’ve ever been”, writes Rose, outlining the political, economic, environmental and technological changes that have made trusted quality information an increasingly valuable social commodity.
By extension, this makes trusted news brands just as relevant for advertisers looking for a safe and engaging media environment amid rising harmful content online.
Rose demonstrates this relevance by looking to the calibre of entries honoured at the 2024 Newsworks Awards. She highlights several key themes that drove effectiveness for the winners of the 2024 Newsworks Awards, including trust and context.
With a digital media ecosystem blighted by rampant misinformation, the importance of credible and accountable news brand content continues to rise. With readers’ trust in their news brands providing a halo effect for advertisers, Rose writes that “several entries at the [2024] awards…had specifically chosen news brands as trust was cited as a key enabler of campaign success”.
Meanwhile, growing media fragmentation and resistance to interruptive advertising has made context and contextual targeting vital to drive cut-through and engagement with consumers.
“Contextual advertising has been shown to drive attention and help deliver on brand KPIs such as relevance and consideration”, Rose writes. With news brands’ long-standing reputation for relevance around a host of themes driving the news agenda, it was no surprise “the judges saw some pretty smart use of context and contextual targeting”.
In her summary, Rose highlights how the winning campaigns demonstrate news brands’ ongoing importance and relevance to advertisers. She praises how news brands have “adapted and innovated to provide readers and advertisers with what they want, when they want it and in ways that suit our changing lifestyles”.
Helen Rose’s full column appears in InPublishing.
