The content backlash starts here

For several years content marketing, native advertising and such have been unassailable buzzwords. If there is a problem with content marketing, then marketers are only now waking up to it. The content backlash starts here

Today 'content' is the term advertisers and marketers use for that digital stuff used for advertising that isn't an ad. Native advertising refers to material made for advertising that doesn't look like an ad - like a Facebook post or Buzzfeed article for instance.

'Content' is broad in scope, from Snapchat posts to YouTube videos to articles. Content marketing is pretty much ubiquitous, brands using material to push what they do. It seems an obvious approach, to use new media in a way that matches consumers' use of media to, if not give them what they want, but perhaps something that will interest them.

The signs are everywhere.

Last week noted creative Dave Trott published a scathing takedown of 'content', essentially writing it off as worthless, quickly followed by a defence by BBH's digital publishing director (ie their head of content) Richard Cable.

The debate has started, but Trott was not the only one.

Digital marketing sceptic Bob Hoffman has waged a lengthy campaign against all forms of digital marketing, and native advertising is the latest target. Even Buzzfeed's creator Jonah Peretti is down on the term 'content'.

Last year technology and marketing commentator Greg Satell made a riposte to Bill Gates's famous 1986 Content is King article (see below) with Content is Crap, pointing out that if material was good, it wouldn't be content at all, but a film, article, book, TV show etc.

This perspective has been adopted by the Harvard Business Review - the content backlash has momentum.

There is more evidence.

Our own Customer Acquisition Barometer found that content was at best only mildly interesting to consumers, 10% saying 'exclusive content' would persuade them to offer up an email address.

Then there is News UK, who have apparently read this research, and removed their paywall for The Sun. Subscriptions have failed to compensate for the site's loss of traffic according to this research.

How did we get here?

When Google launched in 1998, it quickly cornered the market in search. Google's algorithms could interpret what occurred on the internet more quickly and with greater accuracy than its competitors.

Google launched AdWords in 2000, which allowed them to make money from search, and it continues to form the backbone of their business. AdWords has just celebrated its 15th anniversary.

At some point people noticed that particular words made pages rank higher than other pages in search.

Adapting pages to make Google's algorithms happy, or 'search engine optimisation', became not just something that could be farmed out to the intern or to a consultant but an entire industry. Content - then blogs and articles - could be used to improve search ranks and perhaps go on to sell something.

Just two years before Google launched Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, saw the potential of the internet as a means to offer consumers 'content'. His 'Content is King' article imagined the computer at the heart of entertainment and media consumption. His use of the word 'content' has stuck.

Gates developed many of his ideas from Nicholas Negroponte, whose classic Being Digital, published a year earlier in 1995, featured the famous Negroponte Switch.

The Negroponte Switch needs a little context. It was developed when the internet was a hobbyist's paradise and telephones were things in your house connected with a cable to the wall.

Negroponte was aware of mobile phones, and could see that the TV and the 'phone occupied each other's place in the home. The 'phone was fixed to the wall, while the TV could be moved around because it's signals came from UHF signals broadcast over the airwaves.

Really it made more sense for the TV to be fixed to the wall and receive its signals from a phone line, and the phone made mobile and in your pocket so you can answer your mum's call the first time before she rings back asking if 'everything's OK?' It seems obvious now, but this was at the time a revolutionary insight, showing where the internet could eventually go.

As Bill Gates then rightly predicted, it's not just TV but any kind of 'content' that can be transmitted via the internet. You don't really even need a TV any more, just a computer.

Content with content?

Gates believed that the internet was the answer for many different types of content delivery, the only obstacle being managing micropayments, an argument still in circulation despite the micropayments problem solved by companies like PayPal more than a decade ago. So he was half right.

In addition, none of the above considered advertising or marketing in any significant way until Google launched AdWords in 2000. Nor were the unintended consequences of making media digital, such as opportunities for piracy, really explored.

Fast-forward to today and content is one of the default ways to target consumers digitally. One reason for this is that banner advertising is largely discredited, ads need to be served an average of 1,250 times before there is a click.

The future of content

As the Customer Acquisition Barometer research shows, content is not currently flavour of the month, but the figures are not homogenous.

Younger people are three times more likely to exchange content for private information, and measures across all demographics increased between last year and this year. Content might improve as a lure in the future.

But, as many of content's detractors point out, if 'content' is your objective, then be prepared for consumers not wanting any of it. Nobody opts for content. They do opt for films, such as The Lego Movie, articles that have some value, like Hiatt's The Rivet Press or music, like LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy's foray with IBM.

Essentially, the backlash is more like a reconfiguration. Content for content's sake inevitably means that content will coalesce around the lowest common denominator, whatever that is, but it's probably not something people actively want to read/hear/watch.

Plently of content is not terribly remarkable, which begs two questions - who will watch/read it? Why produce this stuff in the first place?

Like Bill Bernbach said, "In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal."

Creating value is a principle of marketing. That's why brands are brands - they are trusted to do what the other stuff does, but better. Just the perception of better quality is enough.

It's the same for content. At the moment we have, broadly, a commoditised content market.

Build those brands, and they will come.