Is content marketing really worth it?

A routine and absent-minded scroll through my Twitter feed threw up a branded video interview with a leading sporting figure playing in a competition that’s one of the jewels in the sponsoring operator’s crown. A click through to the YouTube page revealed that the piece that had been live for several days had been viewed little over 100 times, which at least had surpassed other clips on the page with a viewership yet to head into double figures.

This video was just one of several operator-published pieces competing for my attention within my newsfeed, making up just a fraction of the vast swathes of video content from other publishers, individuals and non-betting brands. On the proviso that most video content from operators is created to satisfy marketing objectives relating to brand, it seems fair to question the value of an awful lot of the output that seems to be failing on the most important criteria of all – eyeballs – in an already incredibly saturated market consisting of operators behaving like publishers, and vice versa.

In an industry where performance matters and is analysed at every turn, surely someone is questioning the plethora of poorly viewed content marketing pieces that will have taken time and money to shoot, edit and upload.

Back to the future

Perhaps all of this is best explained by Professor Marshall McLuhan, who was ahead of his time when declaring “the medium is the message” in 1964. Fast-forward to the modern day, and it’s clear plenty of operators have scrambled to ride the wave of content marketing, keen to be seen to be active in the right places without much consideration for results or return.

One problem definitely concerns the lackadaisical approach to device and format, namely when it comes to understanding how video is going to be consumed by the end user. In an era when product is almost exclusively mobile first, should customers be expected to engage with video designed for desktop or TV?

Consider nigh on 100% of video is watched on a mobile device and 80% without sound, all whilst your average audience member sits on the bus, or somewhere else. The window to stop the thumb is measured in nanoseconds and if the opening frame looks better suited to the big screen and doesn’t feature subtitles, scrolling past without even dwelling for the three seconds required for Twitter or Facebook to ascribe is the easy option.

Secondly, there often appears to be a lack of appreciation of the differing audiences as operators take a one-size-fits-all approach. Will a piece of video designed as retail schedule filler appeal to someone – likely younger – watching on twitter on a smartphone?

Screen test

Of course, there are some real success stories when it comes to effective use of video; one operator’s bold seven-figure deal with a major influencer is reported to be readily repaying the investment in acquisition and retention terms with the all-important mobile football customer base. Meanwhile, other brands have made clever use of their sponsorship deals to produce video, either earning significant external media coverage and therefore providing measurable SEO and PR value, or by growing audiences on Instagram thanks to live and behind-the-scenes broadcasting.

The real question for operators now has to focus on the ability to determine value and effectiveness of video content and, ultimately, if in the event that audience and viewership remains limited, how sustainable the current approach really is. There’s still a huge reward for those who get it right, but as newsfeed algorithms move to reward quality over timeliness and audiences become increasingly more discerning, the days of video for the sake of video may well be over.

Alex Donohue is the founder of Alex Donohue PR, which provides public relations services for a range of betting, gaming and media clients