The Washington Post has chosen Toronto-based Polar’s MediaVoice native advertising platform to power their sponsored content program, WP BrandConnect, enabling the newspaper to serve links to sponsored content throughout its mobile feeds.
“When a publisher is implementing their native advertising manually, they sometimes have to limit where links to that sponsored content show up, say in the news section, or sports,” Mark Cluett, marketing manager at Polar, told Marketing.
“With this in-feed native ad placement, the publisher doesn’t have to worry about hard coding in links to the content – it appears fluidly throughout the paper’s feeds and mimics the look and feel of their own headlines – except where the publisher will indicate it is sponsored content,” he said.
As a result, Cluett said, The Washington Post can now provide better campaign insights to its advertisers who are increasing their investment in content marketing (the service provides metrics tracking content engagement, social activity and other activities).
“Native advertising needs quality, not scale, and The Washington Post understands this well,” said Kunal Gupta, chief executive officer of Polar, in a statement. “In a world where marketers have access to infinite supply in digital advertising, native advertising offers premium inventory targeted towards high-quality audiences.”
BrandConnect, launched in early 2013, is used by brands such as Audi, IBM, CVS, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz to connect with The Washington Post’s audience.
Polar has offices in both Toronto and New York City, and currently works with other media companies such as Slate, The Economist and AOL.
