I’m a TA for a digital marketing class at General Assembly, and the topic we were discussing recently was content marketing.

One student asked if content marketing was (like so many other things in digital marketing) just another fad.

My answer to this is an emphatic no.

Marketing has always been centered on content.

Advertising messages have piggybacked on the value of other’s content since its inception.

The entire advertising industry has been predicated on the ability of ads to skim attention from the content they interrupt and to turn that attention into something valuable.

First, advertisers tried to grab this attention alongside news-stories in the papers. Then they vied for attention on the radio. They’ve obstructed the view of the landscape along the interstates, and they’ve stuck their head in between TV show’s commercial breaks.

Nobody really wanted to hear these ad messages, they simply wanted to enjoy the content. But they were forced to sit through these commercial interruptions because those messages funded the entertainment.

Now a fundamental shift has occurred.

Instead of paying for the privilege to interrupt other people’s content, advertisers have realized they can simply create their own content and cut out the middle man.

The digital revolution has so democratized the realities of both content distribution and production that now content that is relevant, robust and compelling can be built by brands just for their audiences.

The computing revolution has made the tools for creating content (desktop publishing, digital film and editing, etc..) more accessible than ever and the information revolution has made getting the word out to the masses infinitely easier than it was just two decades ago.

Media’s old guard (the controllers of production and the gate-keepers of distribution) used to be forced to create programming with broad appeal and big budgets to reach a critical mass of audience size and demographic acceptance to appeal to advertisers.

However, when advertiser and content-creator are one-in-the-same, these concerns cease to matter and the gatekeepers get pushed to the side.

The only thing that matters is the audience. Sure, ulterior motives exist, but content quality and relevancy are more closely linked to the bottom line than they ever have been.

Content marketing is not a fad because marketing has always been about content.

Advertising has always relied on the ability of marketers to turn attention into intention.

Content marketing is just the realization that interruption of other’s attention-grabbing material is markedly less effective than earning that attention yourself.

Marketing has always been about content, content marketing is simply the industry coming full-circle, and it is certainly not a fad.