NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Oct 3, 2012) - Outbrain, in partnership with Econsultancy, today released an in-depth study on content marketing that looks in detail at the strategies, objectives, and challenges involved in the fast-growing field. With more than 90% of respondents predicting that content marketing will increase in importance over the next 12 months, the findings overwhelmingly point to the discipline's mounting importance. Despite this, the majority of companies do not have a content strategy, dedicated budget or dedicated individual in place.

The study, conducted in July and August of 2012, is based on a global survey of more than 1,300 digital marketing professionals working for brands, publishers and agencies. Key findings from the report include:

While content marketing is growing in importance and is increasingly seen as its own discipline, the majority of companies do not have a defined content strategy

• More than 90% of respondents believe that content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months.
• Two-thirds of in-house marketers (64%) agree that content marketing is becoming its own discipline
• Less than half of companies have dedicated budgets (34%) or dedicated individuals (46%) for content marketing, though 55% of in-house and 58% of agency respondents are planning content marketing strategies in the future
• Less than half of all companies spend more than 20% of their marketing budget on content, despite the fact that only 12% disagree with the statement that "content marketing is more effective than advertising in driving sales"

Content marketing and social media are inextricably linked

• 83% of in-house marketers use social posts and updates for marketing, more than any other type of content
• Social network engagement is the most popular tactic used to drive traffic, with 78% of in-house respondents stating that their company used this
• Social posts and updates are the second most effective type of content for in-house marketers after email, with 46% stating that this is one of their three most effective types of content

Resources, budget and politics are major barriers to effective content marketing

The barriers preventing effective content marketing which were listed most frequently by in-house marketers were:

• Lack of human resources (42%)
• Lack of budget (35%)
• Company politics (30%)

Agency respondents were more likely to cite:

• Lack of understanding / training as a main barrier (46%)
• Content marketing skills (39%)
• Lack of ROI / no business case (35%)

"Outbrain's business is all about connecting people with quality content and it's great to see content marketing gaining recognition as an important field within the digital marketing community," said Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai. "Our hope in releasing this study is that we can educate the market on the importance of this discipline, and help them identify the tools and strategies that will ensure that they are using content to engage their audience in the most effective way."

"A variety of trends have coalesced in recent years to underscore the importance of content marketing. People are spending more and more time online searching for information, and Google has made significant changes to its algorithms to emphasize quality content in its search results," said Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy. "As such, it's essential that companies start to put dedicated strategies and budgets in place to ensure that they are ahead of the curve."

For more information or a complimentary copy of the report please contact Outbrain directly info@outbrain.com

About Econsultancy
Econsultancy is a global independent community-based publisher, focused on best practice digital marketing and e-commerce, and used by over 400,000 internet professionals every month. Our hub has 130,000+ members worldwide from clients, agencies and suppliers alike with over 90% member retention rate. We help our members build their internal capabilities via a combination of research reports and how-to guides, training and development, consultancy, face-to-face conferences, forums and professional networking. Econsultancy has offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and Dubai and we are a leading provider of digital marketing training and consultancy. We are providing consultancy and custom training in the Middle East, and extensively across Europe and Asia. We trained over 5,000 marketers and ran over 200 public training courses in 2011.

About Outbrain
Outbrain (www.outbrain.com), the leading content discovery solution, is on a mission to help readers find the most interesting content online, while giving publishers and brands the ability to reach a highly engaged audience. Using personalized links, Outbrain recommends content across a network of more than 300 premium publishers, including CNN, Fox News, Hearst, Rolling Stone, US Weekly and NBCNews.com. Links to content on a publisher's own site increase stickiness, while links to high-quality third-party content increase site traffic and generate revenue. Outbrain is currently installed on more than 90,000 sites and generates more than 50 billion recommendations per month. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in New York, with 15 offices globally, including the U.S., U.K., Israel, Singapore and Australia.