Native ad video outlines best practices from The Post and Courier

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P.J. Browning, publisher of The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C., and Brad Boggs, the paper's senior digital director, explain how they generate up to $20,000 a month from native advertising on the home page of their site in a new video posted by Content That Works.

"You can make good money from it," Browning says. "My surprise is that we still have newspapers that aren't doing native advertising. I encourage my fellow newspaper people to get it started. I think it's important."

Native advertising was not an overnight success for the paper. It took careful planning, time to train the sales team and to build momentum. The Post and Courier limits the inventory available for native ads on its home page and has yet to sell out, but it has gotten close – so close that the paper is expanding the program from the home page to the section fronts.

"I wouldn't say that (native advertising) was enormously successful right out of the gate," Browning explains. "But once we got that first advertiser we started saying to ourselves, 'Let's start training our reps one by one...' Then we started seeing success."

"It's important to have engaging content that our readers will enjoy and that's the direction we are trying to go," adds Boggs. "The readers are reading the client's material. We have upwards of four minutes spent by readers on these ads. So far approximately $20,000 has been our peak for one month."

The Post and Courier video is the first in a series of educational videos to be produced by Content That Works in an effort to encourage newspapers to experiment with new ways to fund local journalism.

"Frankly, we see television and radio stations jumping on the native advertising bandwagon and getting results," says Paul Camp, chief evangelist of Content That Works. "We want to do what we can to help newspapers understand how to sell, produce and present great native content. The Post and Courier is proof positive you can charge a premium price, win new advertisers and make money."

Charleston, Content That Works, Browning, Boggs, native advertising
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