This article was written by Adinah Brown from Leverate.
As email gets thrown in the trash or stuck in some spam filter, and banner ads lose favor, marketers at brokerage firms have set out to look for new and creative ways to acquire traders. One rising star in the Marketing arena is the newish method of content recommendation widgets. You know, the content at the bottom of an article headlined 'you may also like…'
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New York-based Outbrain is one such company, making more than 180 billion monthly recommendations to more than 550 million users. Another contender is Taboola, who reaches about 400 million users every month with more than 1.5 billion recommendations.
Falling out of favor
Marketers using these services can see their visitor rates hike almost immediately, however, some have let the promise of higher click rates deviate them from what valuable content should look like. However, many marketers’ greed has lured them into a practice that has gained online content, somewhat of a shady reputation.
A recent study revealed that 6 out of 10 people share a link without having read beyond the headline. Publishers of content who use these content recommendation widgets know that, and have made it common practice to use what we have come to know as click-bait, in order to lure users into clicking on content that fails to deliver on what the headline promised.
Some sites have banned such misleading content, but others have let the potential for revenue get the best of them, ensuing some pretty unfortunate titles, like the “Dog Tells Cat To Get Off His Bed, Hilarity Ensues,” which appeared on a story about murder on CBSNews.com and led to TheBarkPost.com. We can all agree that this doesn’t reflect well on the publisher (host site), nor on the advertiser, who although gets a click, gets a bounce back just as fast.
Brokers suffering from clickbait mentality
The proliferation of the use of clickbait is slowly turning visitors away from content recommendation widgets and making brands shy away from online content, effectively making the waters murky for everyone.
Protecting your brokerage’s reputation in a world where news travels fast has to come at a higher value than a few extra clicks. To ensure you make the best out of using content generation widgets, make sure the content distribution company can guarantee where the advert will be placed, that the quality of the context is paid attention to, and that they keep the end user in mind.
If you can guarantee some best practices are in place from the part of the recommender or host site, and can ensure that the content you publish is valuable in the eyes of consumers, content recommendation can be an incredibly successful tool in helping you generate those coveted extra Leads .
