ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with an overall look at the phenomenon of the content studio; then, drawing on media coverage, scholarly research, and industry publications. It also describes each studio's history and approach, providing examples of campaigns and clients. Postmedia, a chain of newspapers that includes the National Post, Financial Post, and Montreal Gazette, was adopter of native advertising. In 2014, Postmedia launched a native advertising studio called Content Works, which works with a mainly freelance staff to produce content for Postmedia papers. Burda Forward is Germany's largest content studio, creating native advertising for Huffington Post Germany, FOCUS Online, and a number of other sites that collectively reach about 60 percent of the German media audience. As the studio profiles in this chapter attest, native advertising studios have become a common revenue source at legacy and online-online media outlets around the world. In most cases, these brand or content studios are as unique as the publications they support.