Why Local News Loves Sponsored Content
A John Oliver prank deep dive!: Context Collapse #94
So John Oliver just did this great segment on brands paying local news shows to promote their product in on-air segments, or just providing segments entirely free of charge altogether, where they managed to get a completely fake product—the “Venus Veil”—airtime on television. It’s kind of great.
Here’s how Samson Amore at entertainment industry pub The Wrap puts it:
If you’re not really familiar with what sponsored content is, don’t worry, you’re not supposed to be. The entire point of sponsored content is that it’s a form of media advertising the viewers or readers don’t immediately recognize as an ad. Essentially, it’s when advertisers pay news programs to integrate their product into the rest of their coverage as seamlessly as possible.
John Oliver argued during his show Sunday evening that blurring the line between news and ads with sponsored content damages a news program’s credibility. He also argued that it also allows any old product to buy access to viewer’s loyalty and trust for usually absurdly low prices, potentially devaluing any other actually legitimate information that might be shown on the news station.
The funny thing: I’ve worked on sponsored content before. I primarily work in B2B tech marketing, so it’s a different ballgame from creating lifestyle segments for cash-strapped local news affiliates to include in their evening news shows, but the broad strokes remain largely the same.
On my side, it mostly meant producing podcasts, writing articles and conducting interviews that my clients turned into final products that were promoted on industry news sites. They were mostly aimed at a niche audience (software buyers, power users, mid-level managers) that my clients had trouble reaching through other channels.
Different beast, similar industry model.
Sponsored content (let’s be cool and call it sponcon) is everywhere these days for a whole bunch of reasons.
The local news model that Oliver satirized persists because a lot of local news stations are producing daily news shows on very limited budgets, and resource-strapped producers find the idea of free or pay-to-play content useful in order to fill airtime.
Sponcon on Instagram and TikTok is widespread because the internet has driven the cost of starting a new direct-to-consumer brand down to virtually nothing, and hiring a few microinfluencers is often cheaper and easier than the hard work of conventional advertising, marketing and public relations campaigns.
Sponcon on digital news sites is widespread because journalism’s traditional print advertising-and-subscriptions model has collapsed, and advertisers will eagerly pay for the prestige of having their sponcon tangentially linked with “name” publications.
Anyway, here’s an experiment for the week if you’re curious about how much sponsored content you consume. When you’re looking at social media, keep an eye out for how many promoted posts you see and how many of the ordinary content producers you follow bury #ad or #sponsoredcontent in the hashtags of their posts. When you’re reading the news online or browsing through your favorite sites, look to see where the words “Sponsored Content” or “Promoted Content” are discreetly placed right before the article text.
The more you look for it, the more you’ll find it.
Neal