Recently Mashable started running a series of “Seizing Opportunities” videos with their sponsor UPS. The ads are done in white-board style, feature the usual UPS music, and focus on a social media topics that Mashable editors can speak to in a useful way in just a few minutes. As an execution I was already impressed, but it turns out the Mashable program is just one piece of UPS’s overall content strategy. The bigger picture can be seen on the UPS “Popurls brown edition: The Dashboard for Business News” page. Here UPS has created a valuable content hub designed to help their customers with everything they need to know about business – curated news on specific topics, “seizing opportunities” videos from a variety of content partners that can speak with expertise on specific topics, and their own commercials.

All together it seems like UPS has come up with a killer strategy. They’re utilizing key strategic partners like Mashable to create custom content that’s tailor suited for Mashable’s audience and also manages to be synergistic with the ideal UPS customer – a business person looking for business solutions. This same custom solution is being built out with TechDirt, VentureBeat, and other niche blogs. Then it’s all being aggregated to provided a very valuable, well rounded solution center for their consumers- all while ingraining the catchy UPS soundtrack & logo into the customer’s head for quick reminder when their packaging & shipping needs arise. Proving once and again that producing valuable content is the best strategy.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my company’s blog (DRAFTFCBBlog) about the evolution of older social networks that is taking place:

Early entrants into the social networking space MySpace and Hi-5 are no longer competing to be the main social-net in people’s lives, rather they’re refocusing on Entertainment content. For MySpace that means Music, and for Hi-5 that means games; in both cases, the early returns look good.

The evolutions aren’t just about audience numbers, it’s about monetization & compatibility with advertising:

it’s easier to to develop ad-products around music consumption and sharing because advertisers prefer professional content to UGC content

with gaming advertisers have the opportunity to create more involved ad-experiences than run-of-network banners

Facebook itself is focusing on social engagement advertising, which is important when their environment is all about social interaction. More traditional forms of display advertising are proving not to work when it’s wrapped around your friend’s profile or when you’re looking at pictures from the weekend (CTR’s on social-nets are tanking). But multi-media content like video & gaming can still help produce content that is capable of tying with more pure-play branding efforts.

Oh and if there’s any question about where MySpace sees its future, rumors yesterday that MySpace will trade implementing Facebook Connect on their site for increased MySpace music & video share functionality on Facebook should say a lot.

[read my company blog post]

While brand teams are working harder to make their advertising valuable content for their potential consumers, social media sites are working to turn their social media content into valuable advertising. Sites like Digg that harvest user generated content have historically found advertising challenging because the unpredictable nature of the user contributions; Digg’s new ad format Digg Content Ads is solving for this, though, by letting brands curate historical articles into a topical banner ad that is a win for everyone involved.

Digg Content Ads are the the type of ad option that the sites has needed since it’s inception. Great content is submitted by Digg users every day, but the open environment is scary for too many advertisers. Now advertisers can hand-pick a set of articles that they are comfortable with, that draw the interest of readers who might be interested in their product, and that readers have shown interest in. Digg readers then get a focused set of content stories around a relevant topic that are already built into the Digg experience. And Digg gets a way to monetize previously unwanted user generated content.

UPDATE: A great example of the new Digg ad is live for the new Warner Bros. movie Where The Wild Things Are

As part of the massive marketing campaign to promote Microsoft’s new(ish) search engine Bing, Federated Media launched a website called BingTweets. The site takes the trending terms on Twitter and does Bing searches for them, giving context to the buzz. Chris Brogan puts it well:

“What’s cool about that is there are MANY times when we see trends on Twitter and we wonder what the backstory is. In my example, I clicked half-blood prince and got local showtimes for the new Harry Potter movie. I think this can be pretty darned useful”

His point is an increasingly powerful rallying cry for the advertising community – if you want your advertising to hit home with your audience, make it good content. Look at what DeepFocus did for the new Mad Men series, it gave the audience something we wanted (I’m one of the many fans), and we responded by spreading the word in hordes.

This is why I’m pretty psyched about the recent Elmo’s Tickle Hands program that we at DraftFCB launched. It’s tied to a product, but it’s something great for the audience. Free, cute, “Ticklegrams” for Facebook users to send their friends, without having to install even an application (which to me feels almost unheard of on Facebook). It’s something valuable, and it conveys the message. It’s advertising as content.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own thoughts and opinions and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc, Draftfcb, Inc. or their clients.