Content Can't Be King Without Context

MediaPost reporting:
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Making context integral to content
In this framework, context is the measure of matching a user’s profile with relevant content in the right environment. As targeted advertising and programmatic buying become de facto in ad sales, systems need to become more sophisticated and more human. Brands need to move beyond targeting people based solely on who they are, and shift toward targeting based on what that individual is doing right now.
Content (advertising or otherwise) needs to be responsive to the total environment in which it is served. Digital advertising and content recommendations precisely targeted to the right users are complex processes, but emerging technologies manage the complexity and source insight from existing and real-time behavioral and contextual data.
 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/231475/content-cant-be-king-without-context.html?utm_source=API%27s+Need+to+Know+newsletter&utm_campaign=3d2577edc2-Need_to_Know_August_8_20148_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e3bf78af04-3d2577edc2-31701933

3 Critical Content Marketing Trends that Signal Big Industry Changes Ahead

Content  Marketing Institute:
Right now, the content marketing industry, well over 100 years old, is going through as much change as we have ever seen.
The biggest reason, outside of the fragmentation of media, is that the barriers to entry have been obliterated. 
There were three major barriers that used to exist as a gate to corporate publishing. Though they are no longer a concern today, I did discuss them in detail in Get Content Get Customers (published in 2008). Those barriers included:.....
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There are well over 20 phrases that have been used over the years to describe the content marketing industry. When I started working in the industry in 2000, it was “custom publishing.”  Later, it was “custom media.” Today, at least according to Google, the en vogue term is “content marketing.”
The chart below covers the five keyword phrases that I’ve been keeping my eye on (note: I usually include “branded content” as part of this group, but due to performance issues, I replaced it with “native advertising”).

Some thoughts…

1. “Custom publishing,” doing its best imitation of Kodak stock, is now on the verge of being overtaken by “native advertising.“
2. Notice that “native advertising” arose on the scene just a few months ago and is picking up steam in consumer circles. Native advertising is not the same thing as content marketing, but some people think the terms are interchangeable.
3. “Inbound marketing,” which often refers to top-of-the-funnel content marketing activities, came on strong in late 2008 and seems to be plateauing (here is an overview of the difference between inbound marketing and content marketing).
4. “Content marketing” didn’t seriously hit the scene until early 2009.  In early to mid 2012, the term seemed to gap up and separate itself from the rest of the terms... 
5. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/01/three-critical-content-marketing-trends/?utm_medium=linkedin&utm_source=twitterfeed 

Why Interactivity Makes Advertising Less Effective

Adcontrarian reporting:
The advertising and marketing industries had a dream. The dream was that interactive media would revolutionize advertising and make it far more relevant and effective.
There's only one problem. Consumers have shown no interest whatsoever in interacting with advertising. None.
Click through rates on display ads continue to drop and are now below one in a thousand. Every attempt at interactive TV has been a dismal failure. YouTube has thousands and thousands of TV spots and ostensibly "viral" videos. The overwhelmingly majority of which have never been viewed by anyone but the director's mother.
What marketers still refuse to comprehend is that, at best, advertising is a minor annoyance. It is pretty clear that most consumers are willing to go to substantial lengths to avoid it.
Which makes the ability to interact with a medium the enemy of advertising.
...The same crowd that sold us interactive advertising as a marketing miracle is now selling us "content" as the new magic elixir. You see, if we engage the consumer with compelling online content...
Well, guess what? Consumers are at least as eager to avoid our "content" as they are our ads. Most "content," like most advertising, is dumb and self-serving and offers nothing of interest or value to consumers.
Which is just another way of saying that the only way to get most consumers to pay attention to advertising messages is to force them to --  the much-ridiculed "interruption model."...
http://adcontrarian.blogspot.fi/2012/07/why-interactivity-makes-advertising.html