Native advertising is going live, as Cheddar and HP announce a partnership that will bring together sponsor with producer during a show. Cheddar is the live video news and entertainment network that we wrote about earlier this year when it started streaming live on Twitter. Cheddar and HP are partnering on “Closing Bell,” the network’s daily show that streams when the market closes.
The partnership is far-reaching and tightly integrated, and goes well beyond a “sponsored segment.” HP is going to be “the exclusive and official technology and innovation partner,” according to Cheddar. What does that entail? Here are some of the highlights:
- HP devices directly integrated into the show, with anchors Jon Steinberg and Kristen Scholer using HP computers on the set. New HP devices will be rotated on a regular basis and highlighted.
- HP systems used to highlight sites, information and video about the day’s news.
- HP collaborating closely with Cheddar “to identify and program segments of the live show featuring stories and technologies in computing and invention that are transforming our lives.”
That last bullet point is bound to raise a few eyebrows among journalists. HP is, after all, a company that will come up in business news, and “Closing Bell” is a business news show. What happens on a bad day for HP? How would Cheddar handle a story that would be less than ideal PR for HP?
“Every news outlet has advertisers,” Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg told Lost Remote. “Segment sponsorships are frequent on all the major cable networks. Some cable networks, as you know, are owned by large corporations they report on. You disclose conflicts and have ethics. That’s the key.”
It’s a big step for Cheddar and news in general. The partnership also includes pre- and mid-roll ads on the Twitter feed for HP. Cheddar is banking on the idea that the transparency in the partnership will be enough to satisfy any concerns about bias.
Cheddar says “Opening Bell” has “hundreds of thousands of live viewers.” That’s a big audience for this partnership. Its target is millennials, a highly desirable demographic. It’s easy to see why HP would be interested in those numbers and that audience. It will be interesting to watch this partnership play out, and how people will respond to this news-native advertiser relationship.
