PAYING TO DRIVE TRAFFIC? SMART.

I read an article today about brands shelling out to amplify positive press.

I was thinking, why aren't mor elaw firms using this technique.  It's smart and 

it helps capture audience in the cluttered world of online news. Some highlights from the DigiDay article:

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In February, McDonald’s got a media mention that it found flattering — someone wrote a article that called its new line of Fish McBites “delightful.” So naturally the fast food chain wanted as many people as possible to see it. The solution: McDonald’s bought ads from content syndication platform Outbrain to drive traffic to it.

It remains to be seen how effective the approach is in the long run, marketers are buying ads on social sites like Twitter, content syndication platforms like Taboola and Outbrain, and even from publishers themselves to give their positive press an extra boost.

The advantage of driving traffic to a recognized publisher’s site is the credibility the publisher brings to the content. Users are more likely to be influenced by a New York Times review of a company’s product than by a blog post written by the company itself.

As a result, Outbrain said in the last year, it has seen an increase in the volume of advertisers using its service to drive traffic to third-party sites. Taboola said it has seen a similar trend. The majority of ads those services sell still point to content owned/created by marketers themselves, but “amplification” is becoming a bigger part of their business, they say.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is experimenting with a product it calls Ricochet, which allows advertisers to choose specific articles from its archives and paste their ads alongside them. Advertisers are then free to distribute those articles, which live on a separate URL, across social networks and wherever else they see fit. It’s about leveraging the equity of the publisher’s brand for the benefit of its brand clients.