PRNEWS, the Estonian company which runs the content marketing platform PRNEWS.IO helping businesses get media coverage and news site publishers earn rewards, has paid news outlets 1.4 million US dollars for sponsored brand-related articles so far this year.
The amount was higher by 42 per cent compared to the first half of 2020. A third of this amount was paid out to the top 20 most influential sellers of sponsored content.
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“When thinking about the vast community of local media who want to diversify their income sources, it becomes clear that we are only at the beginning of our road,” says Alexander Storozhuk, the company’s board member.
“Also, brands increasingly realise the convenience of using a credible system with guaranteed results without the necessity to hire expensive in-house PR managers,” he adds.
This is because brands already realise content is a great opportunity to increase brand awareness while simultaneously building a strong brand perception.
The first banner advertisements launched in 1994, and they reached a click-through rate of over 50 per cent. That has dropped to a mere 0.25 per cent in 2021. The Global State of Digital 2021 report found that almost 43 per cent of internet users globally use ad-blocking tools at least once a month.
Sapio and Outbrain say that as many as 95 per cent of consumers have negative feelings for brands that interrupt their online activity.
According to MDG Advertising, some 70 per cent of internet users want to learn about products through content as opposed to traditional advertisements.
These trends are reflected in PRNEWS’ growth. Founded in 2015, the company aggregates information from 65,000 news websites, twice as many as in September 2020. It also provides a set of audience metrics and indicators that provide an overview of the quality of those websites when ranking in search results.
Since the beginning of 2021, the PRNEWS.IO platform has been visited by more than half a million people. Most of the visitors are from Eastern Europe, although the platform saw users from 72 countries as well.
PRNEWS operates in Estonia and has a development office located in Ukraine. The company is also a marketplace member of the Estonian digital citizenship program — e-Residency.
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