The past 18 months have seen explosive growth in branded content in the U.S., as marketers seek out new ways to engage audiences—especially influencers who don’t typically respond well to traditional advertising—and take advantage of new opportunities from publishers to integrate with editorial experiences (i.e., “native advertising”). This new wave of branded content merges marketing goals with editorial forms, and the best of it seeks to reimagine the value exchange with audiences, wherein the brand delivers content that genuinely addresses audience desires for information, utility and entertainment. One particularly important trend has been the notion of “brand as publisher,” in which non-media brands develop platforms—blogs, digital magazines, etc.—that either continually or episodically deliver this content to users like publishers do, rather than in the context of an advertising campaign. The brand therefore redefines itself not just a provider of goods or services but of valuable content that enhances the user’s life.

In the U.S., branded content is classified by the FTC as advertising, and must always be labeled as coming from the brand that commissioned it, though there is not yet standardised nomenclature or style for doing this.

Savvy consumers know when they’re being sold to. To engage them, we offered a value exchange: Technophiles have an appetite for knowledge; we had the platform to educate. Cisco’s branded editorial content organically engaged readers. The issue was loaded with immersive stories that showed how The Internet of Everything will change the world we live in. And the experience was tactile. Readers tapped and swiped to simulate a heart attack and trigger how The Internet of Everything could save a life; listen to a song composed of audio representations of hashtags; and track cattle with RFID sensors via real-time satellite.

In the first five weeks available, The Connective was downloaded 27,000+ times—racking up the most downloads in the first five weeks of release for any WIRED single digital issue (in that same time period). In the first 10 weeks available, downloads surpassed 40,000 downloads. To date, The Connective has drawn in 62,057 visitors with a total of 141,491 unique visits. The content views reached 1,863,310.

On average, 73% of readers accessed The Connective more than once. Collectively, Cisco's five ads were seen 123,000+ times. Within each session, WIRED readers on average spent nearly 12 minutes with the issue overall, and two minutes with the issue’s ads—meaning an impressive 35% of their time spent with the Digital Edition was being spent with the ads, seamlessly integrated for truly engaging content that never felt like advertising.