Making branded content perform beyond publication

• Many assignments extended campaigns that already had television components, with digital presented as an additional way to reach audiences online.
• Each format was measured differently. Native articles carried pageview guarantees, social posts were measured through engagement, and videos were measured through views, all within defined campaign periods and media budgets.
• Native articles were usually the hardest to move because they required people to leave the feed and open the story. Even with Facebook Instant Articles available, that was a larger action than watching a video or engaging with an in-feed post.
• Some client-approved topics had limited natural appeal for GMA’s audience. Once an article had been approved, the subject could not always be changed, so performance had to be improved through discoverability and distribution.

I adapted client-approved material to fit GMA’s native-content standards, determined where articles should appear, and managed their performance after publication. I owned the distribution strategy and personally set up and optimized paid campaigns, with execution support from a teammate. Client communication remained primarily with the account teams.

• Edited and reshaped client-supplied material to fit GMA’s native-content guidelines and editorial tone
• Determined appropriate publication sections based on the subject and format of each piece
• Set up on-site discovery through widgets, related-story placements, recommendation modules, and Outbrain where appropriate
• Personally configured and optimized paid social distribution within each campaign’s budget
• Monitored delivery throughout active campaigns and refined ad copy, audience targeting, and channel allocation when a piece was behind target
• Treated pageviews, engagement, and video views as distinct commitments rather than combining unlike metrics into one performance total
• Continued paid distribution when a campaign remained short, escalating only the rare cases that required an approved replacement deliverable

My assigned campaigns generally reached their guaranteed targets within the available media budget. The exceptions were rare and usually involved highly niche article topics with limited audience fit. When continued distribution could not close the remaining gap, the client could receive an approved social post as a make-good, but this required multiple approvals because the placement was itself a paid product. The process made branded content something that was actively managed after publication rather than simply handed off and left to perform on its own.