Dive Brief:
- Reuters, a 160-year-old news agency, is moving beyond serving media with its native advertising Content Solutions division that allows marketers to distribute content across the company’s publishing platform.
- The company says there is a strict divide between the newsroom and its branded content departments, with Content Solutions utilizing its own staff as well as freelance journalists.
- Separating its offering from many native advertising publishers, Reuters is embracing calling the division content advertising, rather than terms such as “sponsored content.”
Dive Insight:
Meeting a daunting media landscape, Reuters, the U.K.-based news agency, is fully entering the native advertising landscape with its Content Solutions division. The company has quietly taken on custom projects for a few years, under the Content Solutions banner for a year, but has been relatively quiet about its native advertising content. This offering allows marketers to distribute content through Reuters’ publishing platform, Media Express, and gain access to 750 broadcaster and 1,000 newspaper clients.
In a Digiday article, Daniel Mandell, managing director of Content Solutions, said, “It was an opportunity to do what we had been doing and evolve that into a new channel, for brands. Given our global footprint, infrastructure, DNA and talent, we have a lot to bring to bear for brands.”
Native advertising has become a somewhat controversial practice when undertaken by well-known media brands such as the New York Times and the Atlantic, particularly when readers couldn’t always tell the difference between advertising and editorial content, or when native advertising was labeled with more euphemistic terms such as “sponsored content.” In this regard Reuters transparently calls Content Solutions’ campaign, “Special Advertising Feature.”