How The New York Times Took Native Advertising Global. But when The New York Times launched T Brand Studio, its native ad shop, a few years ago, the content marketing space still had that new car smell. Thus far, that risk has paid off. To stay one step ahead of other publishers, The New York Times launched T Brand Studio International late last year to scale it’s native ad efforts beyond the U.S. In the U.S. every major media company has already launched a content studio. What does your creative process look like? We launched the international arm of T Brand Studio in September 2015 with four people in London and two in Paris. The creative process always starts with good in-depth brainstorm sessions and, in the end, our crew of audience-development wizards makes sure the content reaches the right readership. There are markets that are more mature when it comes to native advertising and branded content. So it was the perfect combination of a happy client, overperforming digital content, and an extremely cool project to work on.
Today, plenty of brands and publishers have content studios. But when The New York Times launched T Brand Studio, its native ad shop, a few years ago, the content marketing space still had that new car smell. The Gray Lady took a big risk investing in an unproven model that blended editorial creativity with marketing.
Thus far, that risk has paid off. It’s possible to argue that native advertising became popular, in part, because The New York Times showed that branded content could be just as good as, if not better than, traditional journalism. Cue the inevitable link to Melanie Deziel’s paid post for Netflix and Orange Is the New Black about the female prison system.
To stay one step ahead of other publishers, The New York Times launched T Brand Studio International late last year to scale it’s native ad efforts beyond the U.S. The expansion brought on more risk. What if the rest of the world wasn’t ready or didn’t care for native content?
To get a pulse on the global venture, I chatted over email with Nelly Gocheva, the editor of T Brand Studio International. Gocheva spoke about getting brands to be brave, the power of storytelling, and how European audiences feel about native advertising.
How do European audiences compare to American audiences when it comes to advertising?
Compared with the U.S., European audiences and advertisers are still relatively new to the concept of native/branded content. The market is smaller, too, purely geographically, which is reflected in many of the companies’ budgets.
In the U.S. every major media company has already launched a content studio. I think the craze in Europe is still to take off, which would respectively affect the audiences. As everywhere, consumers here are tired and annoyed with direct ads popping up in their faces. What great branded content can do is to provide insight and entertainment. It can help advertisers provide value to their audience, improve engagement, and increase brand loyalty.
Do you approach your native content differently than the American studio? If so, how?
Besides the novelty factor mentioned above, it’s more about the logistics. The New York team usually works on U.S.-based projects, while we create content for brands all over the world and have to adapt to a variety of cultures and ad-market needs and expectations.
But the quality of our work, the creative process, and the approach in general are pretty much the same. We all aim to deliver cool content to our readers that is on par with the storytelling experiences offered by our newsroom. There are a lot of high expectations out there in terms of the quality of our work. We all follow the New York Times guidelines about native content and being transparent with our advertising. We clearly mark and label everything that’s paid for and keep church and state unmistakably separate.
How big is your team? What does your creative process look like?
We launched the international arm of T Brand Studio in September 2015 with four people in London and two in Paris. Currently, we have 11 people, with five more to join us soon. And we’re about to set up a mini Asian studio as a part of our global team to help with clients and projects in the Asia Pacific region.
“Consumers here are tired and annoyed with direct ads
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