Publisher branded content studios, while not exactly new, are still in growth mode. Politico Europe is the latest to bring advertisers a more integrated way of creating and measuring branded content to help grow its ad revenue by 10% this year. 

I spoke with Nico Sarti, Politico Europe's director for creative strategy and production, who’s leading the efforts, about its new offer, what differentiates this from how Politico worked before, pandemic-driven trends and what clients are asking for as we dive into 2021. 

Politico’s audience sits in the niche and engaged bucket, so advertiser demand to reach them is high. 

When talking with Nico, what I found smart was how, with a number of thorny post-Brexit legislations up ahead, the studio’s set up plays to the publisher’s strengths: Driving advocacy takes time, measuring that impact is easier in multi-year-long cycles, both of which are good for business. 

Overall, publishers saw a 40% drop in branded content revenue in Q2 compared to Q1 2020. But turbo growth in Q3 and Q4 led to overall annual growth. As Politico's success points to, this is thanks in part to marketers moving to more mission-based marketing, Jerrid Grimm, co-founder of tech company Pressboard told me.

Publishers' content studios faced growing pains, how Politico and others navigate these while expanding in 2021 will be worth a watch.  

You’ll also have seen that Facebook rolled out News in the U.K. with publishers like The Financial Times, The Economist, The Telegraph and The Guardian. Rupert Murdoch’s News UK is holding out as the media conglomerate brokers more global deals with platforms like Apple. 

In the U.S., where News has been available for some time, Facebook said more than 95% of the traffic Facebook News delivers to publishers is new audiences that have not interacted with those news outlets in the past. 

Facebook, under regulatory pressure, can point to News as proof it cares about the future of media without having to make many concessions. I’ll be covering this in more depth over the next week, please get in touch!

On that note, I’ll point out that you can support our journalism with an Adweek+ Subscription and gain full access to all of Adweek's essential coverage and resources.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Lucinda

Lucinda.southern@adweek.com

The OTT service's 1.2 million base will migrate in March.

A small group of users in the US will provide informative context on tweets, which will initially be available only via the dedicated site.

The data covers Aug. 3 through Nov. 3, 2020, and academics must apply to access the Facebook Open Research & Transparency platform.

The media giant and the social network began their relationship in 2013.