The latest buzz in the marketing industry centers around the concept of native advertising. While this is being touted as a new way to market socially, we understand that this trend is simply the latest iteration of the work that IZEA has been pioneering since 2006 when Ted Murphy created the space with the launch of PayPerPost.
Whether you call it sponsored content, advertorials or Influencer marketing, going native is all about utilizing the voice and the opinions of the Influencer to seamlessly integrate sponsored conversations into the look and feel of the sites on which they appear. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever worked with any of the IZEA sites, it should.
Over the years we have seen a definite shift in the way that sponsored content is perceived from being highly denigrated to becoming so ubiquitous that the Associated Press created sponsored tweets for the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show.
The unprecedented growth of the web has given rise to a new generation of Influencers who only need an opinion and an Internet connection to be heard. Nowadays everyone is a content creator and everyone can be heard.
Seeing the impact of native advertising, more and more brands wonder how they can tap into this rising tide to reach consumers. How can marketers harness the power of influence to distribute their messaging? How do brands connect, engage, solicit feedback and build advocates? How can they utilize native advertising to converse WITH the people rather than talking AT them?
And, perhaps most importantly, how do both sides determine the value of those conversations and the value of the influence they create? How are these word of mouth campaigns run ethically? What is fair compensation? What constitutes a good return?
These are the questions that IZEA CEO & Founder Ted Murphy and IZEA COO Ryan Schram will be discussing in their session The Value Chasm Between Brands & Influencers at the WOMMA Summit 2013 held in Nashville Tennessee, November 18th-20th.
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is the official trade association dedicated to word of mouth and social media marketing. WOMMA’s membership is made up of the most innovative companies committed to progressing the word of mouth marketing industry through advocacy, education, and ethics.
As longtime WOMMA Members, IZEA is thrilled to be leading this discussion and hopes that there will be many more conversations surrounding the topic of online influence – no matter what it’s called – for many years to come.
To read more from Ted & Ryan on the topic of influence and value, please check out their interview on the WOMMA blog, WOMMA Summit 2013: The Value Chasm Between Brands & Influencers.
You can register to attend the 2013 WOMMA Summit here.
