Since the 1950s, advertorials and product placements emerged, and, as the internet and online commerce took hold, Amazon blazed trails by serving up book recommendations to users based on their previous purchases and online behaviors. Today, these sorts of activities-designed to deliver advertising content, online or via mobile devices, to consumers who have demonstrated their potential interest in the product or service-are known as native advertising. The practice lives on a continuum between "annoying" and "useful," depending on the perspective of the consumer. The goal for marketers is to land somewhere closer to the useful end of the spectrum.
May 05, 2014
If you work in the digital content industry, you probably rely on dozens of tools to get your job done. As the list of available tools of the trade grows, it becomes more important to differentiate between the products that get the job done and the products that are identifying the trends impacting the industry and making sure that—to paraphrase hockey player Wayne Gretzky—they skate not to where the puck is, but to where it is going.
Here at EContent, we turned to our inboxes, to our coverage, and to our contributors to find out what those trendsetting products are in 2014. We looked across the spectrum, but we were especially heartened to see the number of tools aiming to help publishers deal with data, manage the total web experience, and find new ways to monetize content.
We hope that you find these tools as interesting and as potentially helpful as we do!
—Theresa Cramer, Editor
Product
(Image courtesy of Shutterstock.)
