Data content marketing and what companies want

In the old days, data was a dirty word in some marketing circles. It was associated with direct mail and number crunching, while brand advertising was all about TV and other sexy stuff. Things have changed enormously. Now data content marketing is exactly what brands want.

The importance of data content marketing was outlined at the end of last week with Contently’s announcement that it has acquired a start-up that analyses how B2B customers interact with downloaded material.

Docalytics lets marketers see past downloaded content including case studies, white papers, PDFs and e-books. According to Adweek, it uses heat-mapping technology, among other things, to glean information such as how long readers spend on certain pages, how many pages they read and what graphics they use.

Speaking about the move, Joe Coleman, Contently’s chief executive, said: “Data is key to B2B marketers, and this allows us to provide them with data that no one else can.”

Personalisation of content marketing is likely to be the next big thing. But this acquisition performs a more basic function. Coleman added that the service can help define how effective a piece of content has been.

In an era when many marketers are unsure of how to measure content marketing ROI, the ability to offer these statistics could prove crucial.

Condé Nast opens up CMS

Speaking of offering customers what they want, Condé Nast has made an interesting move. It has opened up British GQ’s content management system to brands as it seeks to bring in more native advertising.

In short, this will potentially allow brands to create and publish stories on the hoof.

According to Condé Nast digital director Will Harris, it is part of a move to allow brands to share the same tools used by the title’s journalists. At the moment, the commercial teams have access to the CMS, but further down the line advertisers themselves will be given their own logins.

One advantage of this strategy is that it gets around the issue of adblockers. And it further underlines how adblocking can benefit content marketing. Of course, there will be questions about whether it undermines editorial integrity. But research has shown this is not an issue if the native content is clearly labelled as such.

Look for more publishers to do the same…

Data content marketing and what companies want is part of Content24, the online magazine for London content marketing agency FirstWord.