Raj Kuchibhatla is part of the Rogers Connect Market Research and Client Service(RCMRCS) team. His team was responsible for conducting the research with marketing professionals across Canada to garner their insights for #BrandedContent12.
I caught up with him for a preview of the report’s findings. Here’s a condensed and edited version of our discussion.
NW: What was the biggest surprise from the research you were conducting?
RK: 78 per cent of Marketers feel that branded content is the future of marketing.
Branded content allocation spend will increase significantly within the next two years. The percentage of companies that are currently allocating more than 41 per cent of their budget toward branded content will double within the next two years.
NW: Can you trace any consensus on how companies are measuring content ROI?
The most agreed-upon metric to measure ROI is website traffic. 67 per cent ranked this a key metric for measuring ROI, more than any other metric.
RK: What’s the most important lesson that organizations should take away form the report?
However what is being delivered now is seen as “biased and excessive.” (78% of consumers look upon what is delivered as just a “commercial”) There is a clear opportunity here to create better content, the end user is looking for it and seems to be disappointed in what they are currently seeing.