How Quartz uses editorial and technology for advertisers

Max Willens of Digiday writes about the Quartz Index, which was relaunched Tuesday and uses editorial content and technology to produce card-style stories about statistics and data from the global economy.

Willens writes, “So today, in place of static indicators, there are 12 stories that cover a variety of economic indicators, like one on cryptocurrency or the number of jobs that have been replaced by automation. Two full-time staffers create content daily for the Index, along with freelance contributors. Quartz’s branded content team, Quartz Creative, works with BlackRock on branded content that can take different forms: the first piece that will launch features audio recordings of investors.

“Those Index pieces – around two a day – still look different from other written Quartz content. None of Index’s content is bylined (for space reasons, according to Quartz’s svp of product, Zach Seward), though iShares sponsored content will be clearly labeled, and the Index team reports to a special projects editor, Lauren Brown. The Index will also be more tightly integrated into Quartz’s core properties, another response to a BlackRock concern, Hill said.

“There is a lot about the Index that Seward hopes to integrate across the rest of Quartz’s products, like the card-based format. “’Those results are going to inform whether to take it to other parts,’ he said. ‘In our newsroom, you might start hearing, ‘How tappable is that?’”

Read more here.