Introducing Flipboard Storyboard: A Robust Storytelling Platform for Brands

Flipboard launches Storyboard, a new ad experience that enables brands to tell powerful and complete narratives using multiple native formats—stitching together articles, images, animated .gifs, video, and audio— to the social magazine’s 90 million monthly readers. Sephora is among the first brand partners to roll out Storyboard campaigns, connecting with premium audiences while they’re engaging with stories about their passions and interests in a beautiful mobile environment.

Presented as a browsable carousel, Storyboard is an immersive and targetable storytelling experience that offers advertisers another effective way to take advantage of readers’ “Personal Primetime” on Flipboard: moments of engagement when people are more receptive to mobile advertising and branded content relevant to their interests. Flipboard’s research indicates that people are receptive to brand content if the brand is authentically connecting with the topic a person is interested in and the message is relevant to that person’s experience.

Sephora, the leading prestige cosmetics retailer, is highly regarded as a trailblazer within the digital consumer experience, leveraging first-to-market technologies across a variety of verticals, including socialized storytelling. With that innovation mindset, Flipboard’s new experiential ad unit aligns perfectly with the retailer’s “Tis the Season, Love is the Reason, Lets Beauty Together” holiday creative campaign. By partnering with Flipboard, the retailer can engage holiday shoppers across all of their devices without compromising the brand storytelling.

In addition to brands, agencies are responding positively to the new mobile ad experience. “Flipboard’s design-led platform and full screen ads are powerful tools for Mindshare’s luxury clients. They allow them to tell deeper stories, engage target consumers and reach new audiences,” said Daniel Daynes, global digital director, Mindshare Luxury, the global media agency network’s unit dedicated to luxury brands.

“The ease and elegance of Storyboard combines the best of display advertising and native storytelling. It allows our brands to share their stories as an integral part of the content experience on Flipboard. We look forward to our continued collaboration and innovation with the team at Flipboard.”

Flipboard Storyboard, a vehicle for both brand and editorial storytelling, will be presented as beautiful, full-bleed multipage carousel. Readers can swipe from right to left to follow a full story, introducing a new gesture on the platform. Flipboard’s proprietary algorithms extract branded content from multiple URLs and beautifully stitch individual items—ranging from articles, images, animated .gifs, video, and audio—together allowing brands to compose a complete narrative. This also means advertisers can run a Storyboard with existing creative assets, rather than creating new or unique content.

Combined with Flipboard’s proprietary Interest Graph technology, advertisers are able to target campaigns to readers based on their interests and deliver multimedia brand content in a relevant context like never before.

“Storytelling is one of the most powerful and authentic ways a brand can connect with consumers – actual or aspirational. Stories capture consumer attention long enough to communicate a message from start to finish. Flipboard Storyboard helps brands to tell their story in a highly relevant and contextual way,” says Cecily Mak, chief revenue officer at Flipboard.

“In the past year we’ve seen a 47 percent increase in the time people spend reading articles and watching video on Flipboard. It’s a natural next step to partner with brands and give them an opportunity to take engage with readers during these moments on mobile devices with rich, diverse content.”

Source: Flipboard

  Ad Experience, Advertising, Flipboard, Innovation, Marketing, Media, Mindshare, Mobile, Personal Primetime, Storyboard