The Guardian Launches New Advertiser-Created Branded Content Platform

The Guardian is launching a brand new platform for advertiser-created content – ‘Hosted by the Guardian’ – which forms part of theguardian.com.

The full launch comes after a beta period working with a range of top brands including Renault who showcased three of their own videos to highlight their design competition with Central St Martins as part of an overall collaboration with the Guardian to promote their electric car ZOE. Manning Gottlieb brokered the deal.

‘Hosted by’ has been specially designed to host a range of advertiser’s own content – including videos, galleries and articles – to meet the demand from brands and creative agencies who are creating a wider range of advertising content, yet face challenges with distribution and finding a quality context. ‘Hosted by’ provides a premium environment for the content, and delivers a premium audience by leveraging its real-time insight and employing native traffic drivers from the main Guardian pages to promote the content. Campaigns run in the beta period have demonstrated a significantly high level of engagement as the readers actively choose to visit the content.

Results from Renault’s ‘Hosted by’ videos delivered a 60 per cent view-through rate from over 25,000 unique visitors, with a further 4 per cent clicking through to the Renault website. These results fed into the wider Guardian/Renault campaign that aimed to increase purchase intent by showing that with its design and tech led credentials, buying a ZOE was the smart choice. The overall campaign doubled awareness of the Renault ZOE, with a third of those who recalled the campaign claiming that they would consider buying an electric car in the future.

Adam Foley, commercial strategy director: “By creating ‘Hosted by’ we have answered a genuine industry problem faced by advertisers and agencies who create their own branded content and struggle with a suitable home – we have built a premium platform for advertisers own rich and diverse content that serves an interested audience and delivers guaranteed results. We’ve been working with a range of brands from different sectors and been honing the offering and banking a great set of results and campaigns. We’re excited to be opening this out to the market.”

Colette Casey, Manager, Brand Communications, Renault added: “Renault ZOE found the perfect partner in the Guardian for our On-Road-Revolution campaign. Not only were we able to bring together Renault’s strong brand partnerships around innovation and design, but using the Guardian’s all new ‘Hosted by’ format we were able to maintain our brand tone. The campaign was engaging, unique and innovative which is the standard we strive towards across all our communications, particularly brand partnerships.”

Locally , the ‘Hosted by’ format has been lbaunched with Dymocks, Australia’s leading book retailer . The timing couldn’t be more perfect as Dymocks have been able to host two of their own articles on summer reads ahead of the Christmas holiday period.

Sue Bobbermein, PR manager, Dymocks Retail: ” The ‘Hosted by’ format provided us with access to a strong progressive audience whilst maintaining our brand message. Dymocks’ partnership with the Guardian has allowed us to tap into a whole new audience of booklovers and deliver our vision of sharing the life changing magic of books. The Guardian is innovative, open to new ideas and has offered strategic recommendations to help us reach new customers. Our shared aims of promoting literacy and a love of reading has helped us promote our brand values to a well-read compatible audience. “

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