The Future Is Content Marketing Through Photos

We’ve never had access to reams of data like we have today – as marketers we should be thrilled. We can measure performance until the cows come home, and at times we do. Unfortunately, it’s made us myopic.

Great Data, Wrong Medium

We are so blindly focused on using “big data” to increase display advertising performance (by a percentage of two if we’re lucky) that we’ve forgotten a basic consumer truth – consumers don’t like ads. As an industry we’re spending tens of billions of dollars, yet display advertising average performance continues to decline.  Retargeting and rich media show promise, but how many times have we heard someone describe them as “creepy” and “annoying”? Is this the way forward for our industry?

The Way Forward

Luckily, there’s a better way – a much better way: content marketing through photos. It’s a win-win-win model that delivers tremendous value to the entire ecosystem:

• Consumers receive highly relevant, user-initiated content that is related to the photo and article they’re consuming.
• Advertisers become seamlessly and natively integrated into the core image which is being consumed.
• Publishers earn new revenue through image at a time when traditional ad revenue is declining.

100x Performance Improvement

The result of this approach delivers undeniable value to marketers, namely engagement rates and click-through rates that are on average 50x and 100x, respectively, better than the display advertising industry average! So what’s the secret? It’s quite simple – people don’t engage with ads, they engage with content.

Image-Based Advertising Is the Future

No other medium delivers as much information and as quickly as a photo. Photos also evoke emotions and raise questions. So when a consumer is viewing a photo related to the article they’re reading it creates a tremendous opportunity for a brand to seize the moment. Advertising in images that contain your product or spokesperson allows you to deliver your content and messaging in a hyper-relevant manner with tremendous results.

Homepage image via Shutterstock.