The Battle of Content Marketing vs. Native Advertising

In layman’s terms …

For content marketing, a really interesting campaign is created and featured on many different publishers’ sites for all to see and share. Marketers create the content for a fee and network with writers and editors to include it in their stories.

For native advertising, a company pays a media outlet (like BuzzFeed) to create a campaign/story that looks like it’s part of their editorial content.

We looked at 58 Fractl content marketing campaigns and 38 BuzzFeed

native advertising campaigns to see how they stack up.

Why are the content marketing

numbers so much higher?

The biggest difference between the two marketing types:

On average, 90 publishers feature Fractl’s content marketing campaigns, while the nature of native advertising is only one publisher per campaign.

Why fewer social shares for native advertising?

BuzzFeed boasts monthly traffic numbers in the multi-millions, but this doesn’t guarantee social engagement.

When a campaign is published on dozens or hundreds of sites, it’s exposed to many audiences who can participate in the viral loop.

With content marketing, you get a diverse portfolio of links, which leads to increased organic rankings.

Google doesn’t allow “sponsored links” (aka native advertising) to pass value – meaning there is no effect on organic rankings.

Not quite …

FRACTL CHARGES AN AVERAGE OF $10,000 PER CONTENT MARKETING CAMPAIGN

(INCLUDING MEDIA OUTREACH).

*Analysis of about 600 digital publishers

The average cost of launching a native advertising program with a top-tier news

publisher is $54,014.29.*

Has the cost of native advertising been inflated as a means of recovering revenue, or is it truly worth the tens of thousands of dollars that top-tier publishers are charging?

We have MUCH more on this debate. Check out our report on: