The rise, growth, and future of branded content in the digital media landscape

Abstract

The advertising field has witnessed a dramatic transformation over the past decade. This contribution to the IJA 40th anniversary special issue deals with (digital) branded content; any output fully/partly funded or at least endorsed by the legal owner of the brand which promotes the owner’s brand values, and makes audiences choose to engage with the brand based on a pull logic due to its entertainment, information, and/or education value. We sketch the rise and growth of native advertising and content marketing as two major branded content types in the digital era and describe how the topic has been covered in academic advertising research in the past decade. We conclude with a future outlook for advertising research and practice in hope of encouraging further academic research on the topic and providing insights to practitioners to further develop their digital branded content.

Keywords:

• Branded content
• native advertising
• content marketing
• covert advertising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under Grant G058018N.

Notes on contributors

Nathalie Dens

Nathalie Dens (Ph.D., University of Antwerp) is professor of marketing at the University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business & Economics, Marketing Department. Her research focuses on persuasive communications effectiveness for different communication formats and strategies.

Karolien Poels

Karolien Poels (PhD, Ghent University) is full professor in strategic communication at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is a member of the research group MIOS (Media and ICT in Organizations and Society). Her research topics include (1) advertising and consumer psychology and (2) digital games and social media.