Sponsored Content & Digital Services

Native advertising can expand your audience, drive traffic, raise brand awareness, and boost conversion rates. It’s your chance to control your brand messaging and to tell your story the way you want to!

What is Native Advertising?

Native advertising is a way to reach out to an audience in an unobtrusive way that looks and reads as the surrounding content and succeeds in building trust, brand awareness, generating leads plus more. At its best, it captivates, it informs, it entertains and it seamlessly melds with surrounding material for a great user experience. Most importantly, though, great native advertising gets desired results by use of text and video!

Did you know that 84% of people expect brands to create their own content?
It is predicted that native advertising will dominate all other forms of advertising and will make up nearly three-fourths of ad revenue by 2021.
Brands are forecasted to spend over $85 billion on native advertising annually by the year 2020!
On average, people in the US consume 18.2 online content assets before making a purchase decision.
Did you know that 84% of millennials do not trust traditional advertising at all?

Gen Z prefer a story and experience to things for things’ sake. In a time where the number of choices can seem overwhelming, a trusted source to help them sift through the masses goes a long way. That source can be a friend, a favorite influencer, or content from a perceived expert. Consider:

Millennials are 44% more likely to trust experts, who happen to be strangers, than advertisements. <Hubspot>
And 247% more likely to be influenced by blogs or social networking sites. – <Hubspot>
83% of millennials believe online content is very useful in helping them make purchasing decisions. – <IAB>.
Millennials do not care if that expert content is sponsored…an expert is an expert. <Hubspot>

If the headline and image offer a clue to what is in store on the other side of the click, they are going to engage with it.

85% of millennials say in-feed Native Ads are the same or better than the other content on the page <IAB>
58% of millennials think publishers should only use Native Ads <IAB>
1 in 5 millennials says they exclusively read headlines <IAB>
Only 9% of millennial respondents said they would immediately ignore a post if they found it was sponsored <BusinessInsider>

Native Content Tips for Crafting Headlines & Using Images:

DO: Be Honest; Be Concise; Communicate Value; Tell a Story; Be Transparent; Consider the call-to-action; Use Numbers

DON’T: Click-bait; Sell; Bait & Switch; Lie; Obfuscate; Be irrelevant

Choosing Images

This is a critical creative decision. Generally, the images stop consumers from scrolling their feeds to pay further attention to the native ad unit. Dimensions for images will vary slightly based on the channel the ad unit is being ran on.

Optimizing images

Use up close photographs with faces (heat map studies show that when eyes physically look at the call to action it gets more clicks)
Incorporate familiar imagery
Use brand-appropriate colors
Be consistent from ad unit to content
Trigger emotions

Native Advertising Rates:

Standard Native AD Package $300

300-word article written by you with an image or video of your choice and printed in your choice of the Collegian, CSU Life or College Avenue Magazine designed as sponsored content.
Featured on Collegian.com OR KCSUfm.com home page for a minimum of one week and on selected website in perpetuity.

RAM Green & Gold Native AD Package $450

Includes everything in the Standard Package and adds a post on the popular Collegian daily email blast “The Stump” (sent to 5,000+ opt-in subscribers)
Adds a sponsored post on our Collegian Facebook page with a $25 paid boost (over 5,000 followers)

Social Media Marketing

Social media is an ideal way to distribute your best content. Social Media marketing will help you to drive web traffic, boost engagement on social media, and improve the ROI of your content marketing.

An active social media presence builds relationships with your audience. It is an excellent way to connect with customers and transform your brand by answering customer questions, and entertaining and informing them with relevant content. Often times, you will even form bonds over shared interests.

90% of all marketers say social media marketing has increased their business exposure and reach. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 68% of American adults are Facebook users. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 78% use Instagram and 45% are on Twitter. Even among Americans 65 and older, 37% are social media users.

What happens when organic reach is down across most of the major social networks? The days of simply posting on social and expecting all your followers to see everything are over. That is why it is important to collaborate with us because we have a large following of engaged users ready to learn more about your business!

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By the Numbers:

Our Rocky Mountain Student Media social media pages have close to 20,000 followers!

The Collegian Facebook page has 5,509 followers; Twitter has 3,449 followers and Instagram has 2,174 followers

The KCSU Facebook page has 5,017 followers; Twitter has 2,337 followers; and Instagram has 1,078 followers

Social Media Rates

Sponsor a post on our social media platforms (includes a targeted paid boost) $150

Facebook Live Streaming for up to one-hour $175

Daily e-Blast Digital Ads on “The Stump”

Our daily e-blast “The Stump” is growing in popularity with over 5,000 opt-in subscribers. Featuring all the top stories covered by the Collegian staff each day, your online banner ad (300×250 pixels) runs along the sidebar and includes a direct link to your website and/or point-of-purchase.

Online Square Banner (300×250 pixels) for 30 blasts (or sends) $175