Branded Entertainment or content marketing is a rapidly growing strategic marketing approach within the U.S. It is becoming an increasingly important element in the evolving media landscape for advertisers, allowing brands to cut through the cluttered digital space and connect with their audience.

Barriers for branded entertainment are commonly walking the fine line between what is editorial content and what is advertiser content. Editorial properties do not want to misinform audiences pertaining to where content is coming from, providing a disingenuous voice from a brand. Advertisers are then forced to create custom content on their own that does not always provide value to the audience. Publishers and professional entertainment producers bridge that gap for brands.

This Built America is a premier program for the agency, and engaged over 13M unique audience members through publishing, promotion and syndication across the agency ecosystem: the agency Homepage, multiple properties (TechCrunch, Engadget, DailyFinance, AutoBlog), On Video Network, and owned social channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn. This Built America was search-engine optimized for organic audience engagement.

TBA garnered over 22M video views, 13M unique visitors, 30M pageviews, 65M media impressions with over 3 minutes of time spent consuming the content across all platforms throughout the duration of the program

Content: Content was rated as easy to follow (87%), told me something new (83%), educational (81%), inspirational (75%), original/different (74%)

Sponsor Recall: 86% Ford recall (57% agency benchmark)

Integration: 73% rated Ford’s custom pre-roll integration as “just right” (vs. “too much” or “too little”)

Perception: 83% associated Ford with “American made” (76% control); 61% felt Ford cares more about American industry than other auto manufacturers

Consideration: 8-point increase in viewers wanting to learn more about Ford