From television to the web. Migration has been going on for years, more or less silently, more or less quickly. A migration of viewers and of course also of content: stories, narratives, live events, but also and above all advertising.
The numbers, in this sense, speak for themselves. Of the 503 billion dollars raised by advertisers in 2015, 32% went to digital media, against 30% from printed paper and 38% from television, which maintained a leadership which, however, seems to be increasingly in discussion.
Yes, because Facebook and Google are hot on their heels and the numbers are on their side: according to the latest data on the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg, 100 million hours of video are consumed per day, numbers which, if added to the even greater ones of Google (via Youtube ) form a huge audience.
Online marketing
Online marketing travels on different tracks. The most traditional, let's say the "basic" level for every large company is that of the brand's social page, which can be a more "institutional" page, one of those that counts more on the intrinsic strength of the brand, or more ironic, one of those pages where the password is "viral", the ability to intercept, also using the right tools, the trend of the moment, the sentiment of, to use a horrible expression, "people of the internet" , to insert the brand into a hot discussion.
Many brands, for example, have recently launched into the story of little Matteo and the word "petaloso", with ad hoc memes and statuses, trying, in this way, to create an "engagement", which is decidedly cheap, in the brand comparisons. Among the most interesting Facebook pages, in this sign, we note that of Ceres.
From product placement to branded content
Product placement is the placement of a brand and a product within a work, a carefully regulated practice that is increasingly used both in cinema and on television (in fiction, but also in entertainment programs of various kinds) . A placement that, in some cases (seeing is believing the scene of personalized ads during the escape of Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report), also manages to become an integral part of a story, despite its advertising nature.
Branded content represents the overturning of this concept: the brand does not enter the work, but is what generates it. The video (or series of videos) does not directly invite you to purchase the product, but often represents, always in a viral form, the values and themes of the brand to be promoted.
The company and its products are thus told through a story that can involve the viewer, enticing him (contrary to what happens with traditional advertising) to look for that particular content on Facebook or Youtube. The brand becomes a narrative and the product, when it exists, becomes diegetic, a part of the story.
In the United States, starting from the BMW videos at the beginning of the 2000s, the practice is increasingly widespread and refined. Even in Italy, however, this kind of digital promotion is gaining ground: many of the most successful youtubers (who can guarantee the brand circulation and video diffusion on their social platforms) have been involved in such operations. Between them The Jackal, The Pills e Frank Matano, just to name a few.
And more and more large groups, national or otherwise, are focusing on branded content, from Vodafone to Huawei via video game manufacturers. The reason is simple: to reach a large segment of the public, highly targeted, in a more immediate and economical way than what could be done with a television commercial and with the possibility of "always staying in the present", of riding, thanks in the rapid times of the web, the wave of the moment.
