Content is King. This has always been a truism of digital marketing since time immemorial. But people tend to forget is what this sentence actually means. Even if you are able to churn out a lot of great content that you use for your marketing, that doesn’t mean your content will be successful. The definition of what "quality" content means has been changing.
We’ve seen spammy content in the past. We’ve seen clickbait. But nowadays, we’re seeing something even worse: fake articles and fake news. This type of content can be very effective in getting spread organically through social media. But how are they affecting the media landscape? If, for example, these fake news and clickbait content is juxtaposed with ads of your brand, will it affect your brand negatively or not?
There has been studies that conclude the following: if a trusted media channel (digital or otherwise) shows a brand that is not trusted by the audience, the media channel’s trust rating goes down by almost half. So it’s just as easy to conclude that if your brand is shown in a media channel or platform that is known to be untrustworthy, trust for your brand might also plummet.
Think about it. Right now, it seems that traditional news media itself is being attacked from all fronts. As media advertisers, we need to think about its future. There has been a global movement that has cast much doubt towards big news media outlets and is affecting its broad audience. The U.S. elections and Brexit are just some of the best know examples where people have been losing trust in traditional news and media in general. The fact is that people are looking online for their news from other sources.
Facebook in Germany has already rolled out tools that would help combat fake news. After-all, if Facebook is beset by untrustworthy content, they will not have a future. This is why Facebook is doing all it can to curb out fake news and fake information, no matter how viral they can become. So "quality" is no longer just defined as content that works to spread information. Virality is no longer a benchmark of quality. Media advertisers would be wise to know the difference as this short term virality that they might want to ride will, in the end crash their brand's good name.
