Altimeter’s 2018 State of Digital Contentgives digital marketers and contentstrategists the latest facts and figures abouthow companies are using digital contentto drive business results. Based on a surveyof 400 content and digital marketersacross North America, Europe and Chinathe report provides key insights into whatstrategies, channels and content formatsperform best in each industry and region. Italso identifies trends in innovation, currentorganization and governance practices,and key metrics for measuring success. 2 EXECUTIVESUMMARYMajority of companies (41 percent) can tie revenue impact directly to content.42 percent of companies can create personalized content based on customer databut only 38 percent of them can deliver it in real-time based on actions.Product-focused content (29 percent) outperformed all other content archetypes,including thought leadership, brand-focused content, company-focused contentand user generated content, especially in Europe and China.The biggest challenges for content teams are people related, with respondentsidentifying team alignment (24 percent) and hiring the right skills (17 percent) as top challenges.Visual content like short form video (52 percent) and images (51 percent) werethe top performing content formats, rated as more engaging than blog posts,whitepapers or podcasts.Instead of views, companies are measuring content success with metrics such asinteractions (30 percent) and eficiency/cost savings (23 percent). KEY FINDINGS In 2018, companies are no longer debating whether digital content provides value to the business. For years marketing departments haveleveraged content like thought leadership, entertaining social media posts, corporate blogs and native ads to establish credibility, promotebrand awareness and increase trust among consumers to great efect. But the success and ubiquity of this digital content has led otherbusiness functions to claim a stake in deploying it. Sales, service, e-commerce and product teams also benefit from delivering digital toconsumers, and, in some cases, are able to provide even more value with their content—which includes product information, support manuals,and buying guides—than marketing groups.Although digital content is no longer exclusively the domain of marketing, it remains the department most likely to own the content strategyand manage the channels on which it is implemented. Thus, the new challenge for companies is how to manage a digital content operationthat serves the needs of the customer, delivers on business goals, and is implemented by diferent departments in a holistic way. With this survey, we aimed to benchmark the best practices and priorities of content-producing companies across a range of industries andgeographies. We asked 400 content and marketing executives and practitioners about the entire range of digital content produced by theircompanies—not just their marketing and promotional content like company blogs, whitepapers or social media posts. We sought to find out how content-producing companies are managing the strategy and production of content, how and who creates it, how itsefectiveness is measured, what is working and not working, and what challenges these companies face. We segmented the results of the surveyby industry, to show how the use of content formats and channels vary across diferent verticals—and to share the implications of that data. The goal of the report is to give digital marketers and content strategists an idea of how to chart their progress along advanced contentinitiatives such as unified strategies, data analysis, and personalization and success attribution. 3 INTRODUCTION3 Deploying digital content is no longer a“niche communication tool for most of thecompanies we surveyed; it’s an integral partof their customer engagement strategies.We asked respondents to measure theircompanies against the six behavioralindicators of maturity we identifiedthrough interviews with top content- producing companies. Their responsessuggest that the majority of companies (79percent) surveyed are on the high end ofsophistication when it comes to producing,deploying, and leveraging digital content.Overall, we found European companiesto be far less mature than companies inChina and North America across all theindicators. There are a few reasons for this.For one, the practice of native advertisingor content marketing isn’t as prevalent inEurope as it is in North America, wherecompanies are more adept at creatingcontent that isn’t advertising or productrelated. In China, companies focus muchmore on product content in service of abooming mobile commerce industry. BothNorth America and China have developedsophisticated technologies to serve thecontent they prioritize.4 MOST COMPANIES CAN ATTRIBUTE REVENUE,SECURE EXECUTIVE SUPPORT AND ALIGNDEPARTMENTS TO CONTENT STRATEGIES Executive leadership fully supportsand invests in using content toachieve business goals My company has a clearly writtencontent strategy that is sharedthroughout the organizationMy company creates relevantcontent based on customerdata gathered from multipledepartments/sources Multiple departments within mycompany consistently publishcontent according to a central visionand common set of guidelines My company is able to directly tierevenue to engagement generatedby content My company can deliverpersonalized content in real-timeto customers based on the actionsthey take on our digital properties FIG 1: INDICATORS OF MATURITY FOR CONTENT PRODUCING COMPANIES Q: Please indicate the extent to which you agree with each of the following statements DisagreeSomewhat disagree Neither agreeor disagree Somewhat agree 36%10%5%49% 37%10%5%46% 47%8%3%42% 44%10%3%42% 40%13%5%41% 41%13%5%3%38% Agree 2% 2% 2% 1% Source: Altimeter Digital Content Survey, Q3 2018; Base: N=400 。。。。。。