Industry buzz is huge right now around native advertising – where digital advertising is seamlessly integrated into your web experience. This upswing in native advertising is fascinating, not because it’s new (hello print advertorial, how are you?) but because it is truly a manifestation of how important quality content has become in talking to consumers, especially in the digital space.

Anyone can create content – the trick is to create content that users want. YouTube perhaps did us all a disservice by launching the era of consumer generated video and setting the stage for our perception of custom digital content. It was a lot of fun, but it was also fragmented and of mixed quality.

We have now come full circle, with YouTube-created content winning a Sundance award . Not every piece of content is going to be a Sundance winner, but this is a great example of how platform no longer limits the production of great material. And with native advertising in the mix, marketers no longer need to fear cracking the ever-elusive “viral” recipe that holds their great content hostage to a niche audience.

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