Stop Interrupting. Start Publishing. Why Every Brand Needs to Think Like a Media Company.
There's a question that should be keeping every marketer up at night, and it's not "how do we reach more people?" It's simpler and more unsettling than that: Why would anyone choose to pay attention to us?
For decades, the answer to that question didn't really matter. You bought the media. You interrupted the show. You showed up in the feed. The consumer didn't have much of a choice. But that equation has fundamentally collapsed — and the brands still operating on the old logic are spending more and more to get less and less.
The new reality isn't just that advertising is getting harder. It's that the consumer has graduated. They have infinite content, algorithmic filtering, subscription services, ad blockers, and the thumb. They are, as a daily practice, curating their attention away from things they don't want. Research from Clutch found that as many as 93 percent of consumers now skip or block ads, with more than half saying they skip whenever possible and 37 percent saying they ignore advertising altogether. Communicate Online That's not a campaign problem. That's a structural problem with the model itself.
The brands that are figuring this out aren't trying to fix the interruption. They're abandoning it entirely. They're becoming publishers. They're becoming media companies. And the ones doing it well aren't just generating content — they're building something people actually come back to.
The Interruption Economy Is Breaking Down
Recent research reveals that 61 percent of consumers actively avoid brands that show them the same ads repeatedly. Even worse, 70 percent have unsubscribed from brands in the last three months due to creative fatigue overwhelming their feeds. Growth Jockey
Think about that number. Seven in ten people have actively cut a brand out of their life in the last 90 days because the brand wouldn't stop shouting at them. This isn't apathy. It's rejection. And it's being driven by a volume problem that brands themselves have created.
A HubSpot-based survey found that a staggering 91 percent of consumers feel that advertising has become more intrusive than it was in prior years. Ads are not only being ignored — they are now actively annoying people. Ad Pulse The first level of overload is no longer unique to poor creative. Even high-budget, well-produced work fails simply because of frequency and placement.
According to eMarketer, 49 percent of consumers decided not to buy from a brand after being shown the same ad too many times — a staggering number when you consider how much companies pour into winning attention. CrealyticsAds meant to drive growth are instead driving people away. The budget meant to build a relationship is destroying one.
Meanwhile, most display ads capture less than one second of active attention, whereas research suggests ads need at least 2.5 seconds to be effective. Advertising Week The math simply doesn't work anymore.
The question isn't how to make better ads. The question is whether the ad format itself is the right vehicle — and for a growing number of forward-thinking brands, the answer is increasingly no.
What "Brands as Publishers" Actually Means
The phrase "brands as publishers" has been floating around marketing circles for over a decade, but it's often been treated as a content marketing tactic — write some blog posts, post on LinkedIn, maybe start a newsletter. That's not what we're talking about.
Being a publisher means making an editorial commitment. It means building an audience, not just reaching one. It means having a point of view, a voice, and a format that people recognize and return to — not because they were targeted, but because they want to be there.
The brands winning through content right now are the ones rooted in real insights about how people actually buy. AI should speed up execution, not replace strategy. Content that feels human outperforms content that feels polished. Audiences respond to authentic opinions and usefulness over brand-safe, committee-written copy. Neil Patel
This is a different operating mode. Traditional marketing asks: "How do we get in front of our audience?" Publisher-mode marketing asks: "What can we create that our audience would actually seek out?" The first question leads to media buying. The second leads to media building.
As audiences crave more immersive, extended content, more brands are expected to produce detailed narratives, how-tos, and in-depth explorations. Digital media industry trends are pushing further toward hyper-personalized content that speaks directly to individual consumers. The Influence Agency
The difference between a brand that runs campaigns and a brand that acts like a publisher isn't budget — it's commitment to consistency and genuine value. Publishers show up. They have a schedule. They have a relationship with their audience built over time, not purchased through a single campaign flight.
Adobe Just Built a TV Show. Pay Attention.
The clearest recent example of a major brand making this leap is Adobe — and the way they're doing it deserves real attention from anyone thinking about the future of brand communication.
Adobe is pushing into entertainment-led marketing with The Marketers, its first-ever original episodic comedy series created to live natively on YouTube. Built around the everyday realities of modern work, the five-part series signals a clear shift from campaign-based communication toward format-driven storytelling designed to sustain attention over time. Media Marketing
Starring Hasan Minhaj and Patty Guggenheim, the short-form series is a silly dive into the stress of the modern workplace, with each episode coming in at around five minutes. TheWrap On the surface it sounds like an elaborate ad — and yes, it is ultimately a promotional vehicle for Adobe Acrobat. But the way they've built it is worth dissecting.
Instead of building campaigns around product features, Adobe is building an "Acrobat Cinematic Universe" where entertainment becomes the entry point and product utility is embedded within the narrative. Acrobat's AI-powered tools appear organically throughout the episodes as part of the characters' workflow — from generating presentations to shaping campaign ideas — avoiding the feel of traditional product placement. Media Marketing
Written in collaboration with comedy talent from Saturday Night Live, the series is structured as a five-episode narrative arc and shot as a workplace comedy set inside the exaggerated world of marketing. LBBOnline There are recurring characters. There is a plot that compounds across episodes. There is a reason to come back next week.
Here's the key insight from Jared Carneson, Adobe's global social media head, on how they measure the project: Adobe is measuring the series by standards borrowed more from entertainment than advertising. The team is watching whether people finish episodes, come back the following week, and engage with the content on its own terms. Campaign Live
Read that again. Adobe is measuring this like a show, not a campaign. Completion rate. Return visits. Earned engagement. These are audience metrics — the metrics of a media company, not an advertiser.
As Carneson put it: "Most brand content is built to be tolerated. The question we're asking is whether it can be built to be anticipated." LinkedIn
That reframe — from tolerated to anticipated — is the entire thesis of brands as media companies. It's not a content strategy tweak. It's a philosophical shift in what you're trying to build.
Red Bull Proved the Model. A Long Time Ago.
If you want the proof of concept that this approach works at scale, look no further than Red Bull — the case study that content marketers have been citing for 15 years, and that still doesn't get enough credit for how radical the bet actually was.
After American Express OPEN Forum, Red Bull is typically cited as having taken the "brand as publisher" model to a whole new level, creating a totally separate division of the company focused on making amazing content — Red Bull Media House — with the goal of becoming a profitable enterprise on its own. Marketinginsidergroup
The quote most often attributed to founder Dietrich Mateschitz captures the logic perfectly: "Red Bull is a media company that happens to sell energy drinks." That's not hyperbole. Red Bull's digital ecosystem — Red Bull TV, YouTube, and beyond — attracts over 2 billion annual views annually, and their media wing generates approximately $2.5 billion through licensing and content partnerships. IIDE
They didn't get there by making better ads. They got there by stopping being advertisers and becoming something people actually wanted to consume.
Red Bull constantly goes above and beyond, creating content that is better than most of the content produced by major publishing organizations. By putting their customers first and listening to their audiences, they have become the most talked-about brand of their generation. Their marketing strategy is to sell an experience, not a product. Small Films
The playbook they proved: build content around what your audience already cares about. Show up at the quality level of the publications and channels they already consume. Make the brand synonymous with the experience — not the product.
Every piece of content Red Bull creates matches the quality of other publications their target audience might read — like Buzzfeed, Vice, ESPN and more. That level of quality makes it seem like it's coming from a powerhouse dedicated to creating consumable media, not an energy drink brand. CoSchedule
That is the bar. Not "better than our last campaign." Better than the media your audience already loves.
The Consumer Isn't Waiting to Be Marketed To
This is perhaps the hardest cultural shift for traditional marketing organizations to internalize: the consumer has moved on. They are not sitting in front of a television waiting for the commercial break to tell them what to buy. They are not a passive recipient of your message.
Brands need to stop thinking about how to get attention from consumers and start thinking about how to earn their attention. Their approach needs to depend less on saturation and more on timing, authenticity, and storytelling. Ad Pulse
Today's consumer is an active curator. They subscribe. They follow. They add to playlists. They come back to creators and formats they trust. About 95 percent of marketers now consider video central to their strategies, because consumers are hooked — 83 percent of people want to see more brand videos, and 78 percent choose short videos over any other format. Semrush
But wanting more video doesn't mean wanting more ads. It means wanting more content worth watching. The distinction matters enormously.
People crave content that feels real, relatable, and genuine. To stand out, brands must double down on human creativity, partnering with teams who understand the nuances of human emotion and can craft compelling narratives that resonate with audiences. The Influence Agency
The brands that earn attention in this environment aren't interrupting. They're contributing. They're adding something to the culture — a laugh, a lesson, a perspective, a story — that the audience would miss if it disappeared. That's a radically different value proposition than "buy our thing."
The future of advertising lies in meaningful engagement. For advertisers, the message is clear: working to create authentic, engaging content is not just an alternative to intrusive ads — it's a necessity in an era of ad fatigue. Advertising Week
What This Looks Like in Practice
So what does it actually mean for a brand to operate like a media company? A few principles:
Commit to a format, not just a topic. Media companies don't just write about stuff — they have shows. Newsletters with personality. Podcast series. Episodic video. The format creates the habit. The audience comes back because they know what they're getting and they like it. An occasional blog post is not a media strategy. A weekly series is.
Build characters and continuity. Adobe's genius with The Marketers wasn't just the casting — it was the structure. Recurring characters, episodic structure, storylines that compound across installments. LinkedIn When your audience has a reason to wonder what happens next, you've built something that an ad can never replicate.
Measure like a media company. Stop asking whether your content is generating impressions and start asking whether it's generating loyalty. Do people finish it? Do they come back? Do they share it because they want their friends to see it — not because a contest incentivized them to? Completion rates, return visitors, and earned engagement are your real KPIs.
Serve the audience first. Distribution is half the strategy. Content needs a plan for where and how it gets discovered across platforms — not just published on a blog. The content that matters most is what changes thinking and earns trust, not what fills a calendar. Neil Patel
Embed the product in the story, don't interrupt for it. The product should live in the world of the content, not stop the world to announce itself. When Acrobat tools show up in The Marketers, it's because the characters are using them to do their jobs — the same way a character drinks coffee in a movie without the film stopping for a coffee ad.
Why This Is Bigger Than a Campaign Trend
It would be tempting to read what Adobe is doing with The Marketers or what Red Bull built with Red Bull Media House as marketing tactics — clever executions you can study and then move on from. But the shift they represent is deeper than that.
With 329 million terabytes of data created daily — more than half of it in video format — there is a growing need for brands to present clear, concise, and relevant data through their content. Creating original, data-driven and story-driven content is becoming a top priority for brands looking to establish credibility and thought leadership. Foxxr
The noise is only getting louder. The tools to skip and block are only getting better. The consumer's patience for being interrupted is only getting shorter. In that environment, the only durable strategy is to become something worth choosing.
Branded content holds consumer attention for extended periods, driving deeper engagement — audiences spend minutes engaging with high-quality branded articles or videos, compared to fleeting seconds on display ads. This level of engagement translates to stronger brand lift, showing up to three times greater impact than traditional ads, and longer-lasting effects on consumer perception. Advertising Week
That three-times lift isn't the result of a bigger budget. It's the result of a different orientation entirely — one that starts with "what does our audience actually want?" rather than "how do we get in front of them?"
Brands that make this shift stop thinking of themselves as advertisers who occasionally make content. They start thinking of themselves as publishers who happen to make a product. That's not a small repositioning. It's a total reorientation of where value gets created.
The Question Worth Sitting With
Here's the thing about marketing that we don't say enough: most brand content is, by its own standards, a failure. It doesn't get watched. It doesn't get remembered. It annoys the people it was supposed to persuade. And then we do it again next quarter with a slightly different creative.
The alternative isn't complicated — but it is hard. It requires believing, really believing, that the audience's time is sacred. That earning attention is more valuable than buying it. That a brand can become something people choose, not just something people tolerate.
Adobe asked whether their brand content could be anticipated. Red Bull built an audience of billions by creating content better than the media companies their audience already loved. The brands that will define the next decade of marketing are the ones asking the same question right now: What would we have to build for people to actually come back?
That's not a campaign brief. That's a publishing strategy.
And it's time to start writing one.
Ritner Digital helps brands develop content strategies built for the way modern audiences actually consume — through editorial planning, video storytelling, and audience-first publishing frameworks. Get in touch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean for a brand to "think like a media company"?
It means shifting from a campaign mindset to a publishing mindset. Instead of creating one-off ads designed to interrupt, you build consistent formats — series, newsletters, podcasts, episodic video — that your audience actively seeks out and returns to. The goal stops being reach and starts being loyalty. A media company doesn't just show up when it has something to sell. It shows up on a schedule, with a point of view, because the audience is expecting it.
Isn't content marketing just another form of advertising?
At its worst, yes. A lot of what passes for "content marketing" is still fundamentally brand-first — it exists to promote a product, it's built around campaign cycles, and it disappears when the budget runs out. What separates true publisher-mode thinking is that the content has value independent of the product. If you stripped the logo off, would people still want it? If the answer is no, you're making a soft ad. If the answer is yes, you're building an audience.
What's the difference between the "brands as publishers" era and what's happening now?
The original brands-as-publishers conversation was largely about blogging and SEO — producing written content to rank in search and generate leads. What's emerging now goes significantly further. Brands like Adobe are producing scripted episodic comedies with SNL writers. Red Bull operates a full media house with TV, print, and film. The new standard isn't "we publish content." It's "we produce things worth watching, reading, and coming back to" — with the production values and editorial discipline to match.
How do we convince leadership to invest in this when it's harder to measure than paid ads?
Start by reframing what you're measuring. Paid ads optimize for clicks and impressions — metrics that tell you how many people you got in front of, not how many actually cared. Publisher-mode content is measured differently: episode completion rates, return visitors, subscriber growth, earned shares. These are audience metrics, and they compound over time in ways that paid media never does. A single campaign flight ends when the budget runs out. An audience you've built stays.
Do you have to be a big brand with a big budget to pull this off?
No — and this is one of the most important points to internalize. Red Bull's media operation is massive, but the underlying principle scales to any size. A local business can run a weekly video series. A B2B SaaS company can build a newsletter with a genuine editorial voice. A professional services firm can produce a podcast that becomes the go-to resource in their niche. The budget determines the production value. The commitment determines the audience. Many of the most loyal audiences online belong to creators and brands operating on remarkably modest resources.
What's the biggest mistake brands make when trying to adopt a publisher mindset?
Treating it like a campaign. They invest in a content push for a quarter, don't see immediate ROI, and pull back. Publishing doesn't work that way. Audiences are built through consistency and trust over time — no different from how a magazine builds subscribers or a podcast builds listeners. The brands that fail at this give up before the compounding effect has a chance to kick in. The brands that succeed treat their content operation as infrastructure, not a line item that gets cut when things get tight.
How should product fit into brand content without it feeling like an ad?
The same way it fits into Adobe's The Marketers — organically, as part of the world, not as an interruption to it. The characters use Acrobat because it's part of how they work, not because the episode stopped to demonstrate a feature. The principle is simple: serve the story first, and let the product live inside that story naturally. When you trust the content to do the relationship-building work, you don't need to stop the show for a sales pitch. The audience already knows what you make. What you're building is why they should care.