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Study: Reader engagement with sponsored content
By Adnews Staff
Vancouver-based Pressboard has released the results of a recent study on the subject of reader engagement with sponsored content. The report bases its conclusions on 331 samples of sponsored content published through the company's service in North America. It concludes that the number of times a brand is mentioned in an item content and the placement of those brand mentions has a "statistically significant" impact on the amount of time consumers will engage with the content.
According to the study, the best place to mention a brand is approximately 300 to 600 words into the item. Mentioning a brand within the first 100 words of an item shortens reader engagement time and causes readers to scroll through less of the item. It also finds that a brand should be mentioned only once for best performance. Each additional mention was found to decrease reading time and reader scrolling.
"For years we've been educating advertisers about strategically and sparingly mentioning their brand in sponsored content," said Jerrid Grimm, co-founder of Pressboard. "Now, the industry finally has the data to validate our intuition. My hope for this research is that it encourages advertisers to boldly but thoughtfully integrate their brand into the sponsored content they create with publishers, because the data highlights that it can be done well."