Forbes ad network to account for 20 percent of 2013 revenue

Business magazine Forbes announced that its three-year-old native ad offering BrandVoice will account for about 20 percent of total ad revenue this year, rising to an estimated 30 percent in 2014.

David Taintor of Adweek reports, “On the strength of BrandVoice, as well as programmatic sales, digital ad revenue has exceeded print for the company, as digital now accounts for 53 percent of total ad revenue. And ad revenue from Forbes.com has grown 27 percent this year through September versus the same period last year, according to the publisher.

“In theory, sponsored content is as compelling as the articles it lives among. But the risk, of course, is that readers will click on an interesting headline and recoil after realizing the content amounts to advertising in an editorial wrapping.

“Native advertising has certainly captured the industry’s attention this year, but the jury’s still out on how exactly to define it. The IAB did not explicitly break out native in its Internet Advertising Revenue Report, released on Wednesday, because the definition remains so fuzzy.”

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