“Content marketing” is a phrase I hear more and more these days, as brands increasingly create their videos, blog posts, and other forms of content to promote themselves, rather than just relying on traditional advertising. Now a startup called PostRelease has built what is, essentially, an ad network for content marketing, so that advertisers can ensure that their content gets distribution, while publishers can make some revenue.
CEO Justin Choi says that publishers just add a few lines of code to their site (or install the PostRelease plugin for WordPress and vBulletin) and create a template for sponsored posts, then the sponsored content starts running automatically. He argues that PostRelease should be more appealing to publishers than a service like Outbrain, because it isn’t linking people to content on other sites, so they aren’t necessarily driving readers elsewhere. Right now, for blogs, the sponsored posts always appear as the second post from the top, though Choi says the placements may become more customizable over time.
Advertisers, meanwhile, just need to upload their content and it starts running on relevant PostRelease partner sites, automatically formatted to match each publisher’s layout. The content is marked as sponsored, and both publishers and advertisers can access a dashboard showing how it’s performing (and, in the case of publishers, how much money they’re making).
As a reader, you might not be thrilled about seeing sponsored content mingling with the regular content on your favorite blogs and other sites. But hey, it’s something that happens already — PostRelease has just created technology that helps automate and optimize the process. Speaking of optimization, Choi says the company also adjusts the placements in real-time based on reader response, so if the readers of a given site don’t seem interested in a particular blog post or video, it should eventually disappear (perhaps replaced by something more relevant).
PostRelease only started its sales efforts in earnest in the second quarter of the year, but Choi says it has already signed up a number of partners, including community app Tapatalk, Source Interlink Media (whose brands include the Motor Trend Automotive Group), and Entrepreneur.com publisher Entrepreneur Media.
The company’s investors include former Playdom and Adify co-founder Rick Thompson, Ed Cluss of Kauna Ventures, and Adify co-founder Russ Fradin.
PostRelease is an advanced content marketing platform that provides companies and brands with a simple, scalable way to reach audiences with text, images, embedded video and other valuable content that is automatically distributed and published on relevant blogs, forums, and content sites. PostRelease provides marketers with a medium by which they can tell a deeper story about a brand, product or service and drive discovery of their content. It also provides a premium revenue stream for the content-rich website,...
Rick is a serial entrepreneur, in a good way. Prior to founding Playdom, Rick co-founded and served as CEO and/or chairman of two successful Internet technology companies, Adify and FlyCast Communications. Rick was also on the founding team of Octel Communications, a leading manufacturer of voice information processing systems. As the oldest (and, um, wisest) member of Playdom’s founding team, Rick helps shape business strategy and reminds us to always think big. Rick holds a BS in psychology from...
Russ Fradin is a digital media industry veteran with more than 15 years experience in the online marketing world. Russ co-founded and was CEO of Adify (acquired by Cox for $300M in May 2008) and co-founded SocialShield. He was also SVP of BD at Wine.com, EVP of Corporate Development at comScore (NASDAQ:SCOR) and was among the first employees at Flycast (acquired by CMGi for $2.3B in January 2000). Russ is also an active angel investor in...
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