Ryan Skinner
Senior Analyst
Author Insights
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What Lies Behind That Result From Facebook
Pundits’ take that Facebook has “solved” mobile advertising after its home run last week hid a bigger, behind-the-scenes story: We’re finally seeing branding and direct response marketing merge in a meaningful and measurable way; Facebook is just one place where it’s happening most demonstrably. Here’s important context: Facebook’s quarterly earnings beat projections last Thursday, driven by […]
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Something Like Democratic Marketing
Set against marketing messages, I would rather listen to my neighbor’s opinion of a product. A critic’s opinion. An expert’s. Any idiot with an Internet connection, in fact (according to our research, review content from complete strangers is more trustworthy than messages from brands). The payload of this realization – that marketers’ messages are overinvested […]
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FT Digital Media: Anguish Over Products
Two ways media’s changing now, and two ways it’s going to change: The FT Digital event in London last week pulled together some of the cream of the European media world. The big conclusion they were made privy to? The media world will soon discover exactly how many ways you can skin a cat. The […]
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The Native Advertising Answer Is Publishers’ Problem
[Recently, I wrote that overly optimistic or pessimistic predictions of native advertising’s future were the result of vast (and naïve) assumptions. I concluded that a more accurate prediction would not hinge upon grand theories about how great native advertising is or isn’t, but rather a wily assessment of many factors – the foxlike approach of […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight VII: The Pains And Joys Of Going Mainstream
What’s happening (that’s important) in the world of content marketing? This is your fortnightly round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content; for the previous “Fortnights”, go to the bottom of the post. (And for more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from the […]
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Does Native Advertising Face A $3 Billion Question?
Predictions about native advertising’s medium-term impact are both short-sighted and simplistic. In 1973, the Wall Street Journal quoted a professor: “Academic politics is the most vicious…because the stakes are so low.” Thereafter, the idea (that the intensity of a dispute is inversely proportional to its stakes) was named after the professor: Sayre’s Law. Sayre’s law […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight VI: Drew Barrymore A Content Marketer?
What’s happening (that’s important) in the world of content marketing? This is your fortnightly round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content; for the previous “Fortnights”, go to the bottom of the post. (And for more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from the […]
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Native Advertising: Worth Pursuing
Forrester analysts are encouraged to “make the call” and here’s a call that is sure to invite some heated disagreement (native advertising has a way of doing that). Today my report about native advertising came out and, if I had to bottle up the recommendation of the entire report in a two-word slogan, this would […]
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Will Native Advertising Be A Tragedy Of The Commons?
One thing can be said definitively about native advertising: It is poorly understood. It’s advertising, but shouldn’t act like it (even though it should definitely be labeled as such). It’s like advertorials, but also far more than that – just as media sites are more than web newspapers. The media world loves it and loathes […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight V: A time for branded data, surveys, reports and playbooks
What’s happening (that’s important) in the world of content marketing? This is your fortnightly* round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content; for the previous “Fortnights”, go to the bottom of the post. (And for more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight IV: Some content marketing insecurity
What's happening (that's important) in the world of content marketing? This is your fortnightly round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content; for the previous "Fortnights", go to the bottom of the post. (And for more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from the […]
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Rise of the Content Distribution Space
This morning’s announcement by OneSpot – a company that helps marketers place their content in front of relevant buyers through display advertising – of series A financing to the tune of $5.3 million may pale next to recent multibillion IPOs and valuations, but it says a lot about a new space opening up: content distribution. […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight III: On acquisitions, trust and beauty
Here’s your fortnightly round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content. (For more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from the first one. And, if you want to get this curated newsletter in your inbox every other week, send me a mail.) Content […]
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Great Content Is Not Enough
There’s a serious, but neglected, problem at the heart of content marketing. Marketers and agencies have invested large sums to create quality content, but – in many cases – it’s not getting discovered. Audiences are neither finding nor sharing it. It’s not going viral. It’s not going anywhere. One CEO at a company that helps […]
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Content Marketing Fortnight II: Advertising is…unclear
Here’s your fortnightly round-up of the best of the best stuff online for marketers who think about content. (For more information about what the Content Marketing Fortnight is, see my intro from the first one. And, if you want to get this curated newsletter in your inbox every other week, send me a mail.) Advertising […]
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“Who paid for this content?!”
Imagine this scenario: Only days before the New Hampshire primaries, an article appears on the Des Moines Times-Courier website: “Candidate Chris Christie Hiding Past As Exotic Dancer,” and quickly goes viral, appearing in millions of Twitter streams, Facebook feeds, and email inboxes. Most people see the headline and shake their heads – “Politicians!” As a […]
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Mini content curation masterclass: A fortnight in content marketing
I read a disconcerting amount of content about content; you wouldn’t expect less from Forrester’s content marketing analyst. So I thought: Why not do something with it? I’m going to curate and occasionally publish a great little list of content links. As introduction, here's my formula for curation. Tight focus on audience: This is for […]
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16 Ways To Turn Content Marketing Into Business Value
According to Digiday, current affairs website Slate demands minimum $100,000 from brands to build an “advertising content program”. Forbes asks for $50,000 a month to give brands a platform for publishing content on their site. And many companies are spending as much or more on their own content sites. Given the mighty spend, the silence […]
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Let’s talk content marketing
"What's at the heart of content marketing?" "Why does content marketing make sense for me?" "How do I do it well?" Chances are, you're asking yourself one or, indeed, all of the above questions. And that is why I have decided to join Forrester's Marketing Leadership research team as a senior analyst. I've been working […]
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