It’s the perfect test group. Large print and broadcast companies, hyper-local digital publishers, international content teams and innovators with unique business models, all coming together to do one thing – grow their branded content revenue.

The Branded Content Project, a partnership between the Local Media Association, the Local Media Consortium and funded by the Facebook Journalism Project has recently announced the selection of 22 diverse local media companies as beta group participants for the branded content project. These organizations, each of which demonstrate a commitment to furthering best practices in branded content initiatives, will receive grant money to test and develop successful and sustainable branded content offerings and revenue streams.

These innovative and industry changing publishers are all experts in locally grown branded content revenue initiatives. In order to learn more about how and why they have seen so much success, we asked all 22 organizations the same 5 fill-in-the-blank questions:

  1. Describe your initiative, what you see as the strongest elements of your program, and what makes it unique.
  2. Branded content is an important revenue opportunity for media groups and advertisers because …
  3. The aspect of the Branded Content Project Beta Group that excites us the most is …
  4. We hope to learn [fill-in-the-blank] through the Branded Content Project.
  5. If a media organization were just starting to sell branded content, we would tell them …

Click each link below to learn about each beta partner and hear their thoughts on sustainability, revenue potential and most importantly, discover their advice on starting or building branded content initiatives.