Hasta La Creative!

A couple weeks ago , I was briefed on a new company called OneSpot. Headed by venture capitalist and former head of interactive at the Houston Chronicle, Matt Cohen, the new company transforms existing content into ads that look more like content than ads.

After the briefing, I said the offering was “the perfect marriage of content marketing with the power and infrastructure of advertising.” Yes, I really said that and yes, that quote is front and center on the OneSpot website which launches today.

Recently, so much has been written about content marketing which, as part of inbound marketing, is all about making sure the right information is in the right place when people come looking for it. But, people don’t always know what to look for and they don’t always know which available products and services could benefit them. Hence, the need for outbound marketing.

For now, one of the most efficient methods of paid online advertising is the advertising network. With its new offering, OneSpot has coupled the power of and reach of the ad network with the informative and educational nature of content.

How does it work? Using OneSpot, marketers can automatically covert content they own or earned from social networks and reviews into IAB standard ad units. Then, with big ass back room data crunching that analyzes the content from which the ad was created and the ad itself, OneSpot matches the ad to appropriate inventory available on ad exchanges and places the ad using real time bidding. Optimization and retargeting help insure the ad continues to perform as effectively as possible.

Each created ad includes social sharing buttons allowing for further extension of the content.

And in the optimization and retargeting phases, different ad content can be aligned with different inventory based upon where the consumer is in the buying cycle. In other words, ads (that are increasingly more product-focused) can be sequenced to align with a person’s thought process; “I’d like to buy a new camera.” > “Do I need a point and shoot or a heavy duty DSLR?” > “Should I get the Nikon 5200 or the Canon EOS 50D?”

Of the new offering, Cohen said, “Over $16 billion will be spent on digital content in 2012 – blogs, reviews, videos, how-to tips, whitepaper, webinars, and more. For every piece of content your business wants people to see, you should have an associated distribution strategy to drive desired business outcomes: lead generation and nurturing, promoting reviews, or brand awareness. No distribution channel is as ubiquitous as online advertising. We see a tremendous opportunity to help businesses monetize their all their content using the power, data intelligence, and infrastructure of online advertising to deliver it.”

So in a nutshell, OneSpot is all about using the power and reach of the advertising network to greatly improve upon existing content marketing efforts. Think about it. If no one ever sees your content, was it worth all the effort it took to create it?

Remington Products is one brand currently using OneSpot. Of the experience, eCommerce Director Ryan Koechel said, “A content strategy is something we always thought we had prior to working with OneSpot, Previously we put out a piece of content through social media, our blog, or on our site and hoped we received some traction. Now with OneSpot we can get a piece of content in front of a ton of eyeballs on day one and then use the data to start building audience and re-target with relevant follow-up content. “

The full scope of the OneSpot offering includes:

– Instantly create and promote content ads on demand from your browser.
– Import content from blogs, social networks, or manually by URL.
– Add your own tracking code to measure performance, engagement, and leads for the content in your analytics package.
– Dynamic targeting:
– Network integration
– Retargeting
– Geotargeting
– Real time visibility into content marketing campaign success by measuring:
– Audience development including new readers and repeat visits
– Engagement level by site and demographic

Check out OneSpot here and a demo here.