Forbes leader defends Advoice program

Lewis Dvorkin, the chief product officer at Forbes, defends the magazine’s Advoice program, which gives companies an opportunity to post content on the business magazine’s website.

Dvorkin writes, “Now we’re taking dead aim at the disruptive forces before us by reconceptualizing how to fulfill the needs of our readers and advertisers alike.

“Our AdVoice program is a bold and critical part of our larger strategy–to position the most authoritative content from journalists, authors, academics, experts and marketers, too, at the center of a social media experience. AdVoice is for marketers, informed content creators in their own right. It provides them with the same tools that I or any of our staffers and contributors use to publish content on Forbes.com. It offers marketers a voice–a way to supplement traditional forms of advertising–and a unique opportunity to engage customers with thought-leading ideas in a credible news environment. Transparency is essential. I’m identified as a FORBES staffer; a marketer’s post carries the AdVoice label.

“Last week AdVoice demonstrated a new reality, exciting for us but perhaps discomfiting to traditionalists. SAP, a huge software company and an AdVoice partner, published an intelligently provocative post about Apple and the iPhone 5. Readers flocked to it. Powered by Facebook and LinkedIn shares it rose to the No. 1 spot in our most-popular-story module, nestled among posts written by staffers and contributors. An SAP post a few weeks ago on Salesforce.com hit the No. 2 spot.

“Jonathan Becher, SAP’s chief marketing officer and an AdVoice writer, says AdVoice enables his company’s employees to write with ‘authenticity’ and join the conversation.”

Read more here.