I believe truly effective branded content in the years to come will be a question quality over quantity. With the rise of generative AI, the amount of content will explode – especially online. It will become increasing important for advertisers to find a way to set themself apart from the masses of crappy content available to consumers. With content being easier, faster and cheaper to produce, focus should turn to making sure it is data-driven and even more relevant. Use AI to make sure your making the right content, not just more of it.
Key Insights
Content marketing should not be created in a vacuum. Just having people consume your content won’t be enough to reach your commercial goals. It’s about how you put that content to work for you that will bring real results. We should be more focused on how to incorporate native advertising into a larger marketing strategy and how to lead potential consumers effectively forward on the customer journey. How do we make sure our consumers are familiar with our brand before they come across native advertising? How do we cultivate those leads, that express interest in our content? How can we help these people reach a tactical purchase decision? When you create content you don’t position as a strategic part of a larger marketing plan, you are missing out on the actual ROI you could achieve.
Signature Work Achievements
Having worked with native advertising for nearly fifteen years, Ria has been part of the Finnish native space almost since it has been born. In her current job as the business manager for native advertising at Sanoma Media Finland, Finland’s largest publishing and entertainment house, she has helped to shape the business from the ground up. This has included creating the products and processes inhouse and client relationships necessary to create a viable new business to support more traditional advertising styles.
This was a winning strategy, with Ria growing the business nearly 50% in the first three years after taking over the job and establishing market share of an estimated 33% of the local digital native advertising market by 2024.
In addition Sanoma have won countless international and domestic awards in competitions such as the Native Advertising Awards, International Content Marketing Awards and the Pearl Awards, after Ria took over the business. She has placed strong emphasis on creativity and proudly marketing that creativity to the World - which is rather uncharacteristic for the Finnish market!
She is an active participant in IAB Finland, in the content marketing task force, and has been involved with the creation of many local industry defining projects such as finally mapping the size of the Finnish native advertising market in 2024, establishing common terminology for native advertising, and creating IAB standard influencer guidelines for the local market.
Career Lessons
We still seem to think that our work will speak for us - and hopefully it does - but you need to give it a voice. No one is going to notice those numbers, if you don’t point them out. No one will realize you brought home the trophy, if you leave it on the shelf. We need it to be an everyday effort to make a little noise about ourselves and our fellow female workforce. And if it feels awkward trying to tell the corner office what you contributed to the business this quarter, here’s a hint: instead of hyping up yourself, hype up your colleague. Create an environment where female solidarity and positive re-enforcement is the norm.
