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In a traditional sense, the worlds of programmatic ad impressions and value-driven content mix about as well as oil and water. However, while this was common knowledge not too long ago, if you know one thing about the world of content marketing, it’s that brands and marketers alike are willing to push the limits of what’s deemed acceptable in order to garner even more reach and viewership among audiences across the web. With this in mind, let’s dig into who’s blazing this trail, how it works, and what your brand needs to do in order to blend your current content with the fast-paced world of programmatic media buying.

Understanding the Process

If you’re not familiar with what programmatic buying is, it’s important to catch you up to speed before delving into the particulars regarding its merger with the world of content marketing. Essentially, media buying of this flavor pairs ad content generated by your brand with open impression spaces via either bidding systems that make transactions in real time, or by way of bulk automated purchases that rely on spending, quantity, and frequency parameters.

So how does all of this technical babble bolster content marketing? As Ad Exchanger’s Peter Spande explains, this marriage is all thanks to the increasing influence of native advertising and this approach’s ability to merge outside content into the subject matter on screen. As more and more platforms adopt native ad spots – which inherently rely on promoting quality content – it only makes sense that the best buying systems and strategies join the party in the form of programmatic media buying.

A Rising Trend

As great as all of this sounds, is it really taking the industry by storm? According to David Carr of The New York Times, there’s no denying this movement is part of a rising trend. For instance, take a look at Red Bull; a brand that’s been heralded as an early adopter of the process.

While other brands have utilized native advertising as a thinly veiled conduit for infomercial style content, Red Bull has blended the scale of programmatic purchasing with high quality content that engages youthful viewers and fans of extreme sports alike. As Carr goes on to point out only half-jokingly, Red Bull has done such a strong job on this front that it’s only fair to wonder if this organization is really just a content marketing powerhouse that happens to sell energy drinks.

Implementing Your Own Strategy

Chances are your brand won’t be ready to go toe-to-toe with Red Bull and the other big names of the shared content marketing and programmatic buying arena right away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start building a plan to put your organization the map. In his look at getting ready for a blended campaign, Ben Plomion of ClickZ explains that it all starts with keying in on the type of content that fits into your brand’s native advertising operations.

Branded videos, engaging blog content, news-style articles or releases, and even podcasts and songs are all forms of content marketing that can fit into open impression spots on target pages. The big key here is ensuring that these offerings fit into the target location, in addition to having the ability to retain the same value on other selected sites. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if your attempts at native advertising leave the viewer with a disjointed or confusing on page experience.

Perhaps the most exciting part of all of this is that the shared ground between content marketing, native advertising, and programmatic media buying is still relatively uncharted territory. This means for intrepid organizations, like your own, there’s virtually limitless opportunity to continue pushing the boundaries and extracting even more value from your branded content.