Paid, owned and earned media can work well on a real-time basis, and brands need to rethink both their allocations for paid media and the timing too, says Pete Stein, CEO of Razorfish, in an interview with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Minds, for Beet.TV.

“It used to be that paid media was planned years in advance and marketing had been a very fixed thing,” he says. “One of the things we are seeing in this more real-time world where you are putting content out there, is that there is more of an ability to use paid media as fuel to get the fire started or when you see sparks use it to ignite the fire,” he says. That means paid media works well on the front end, but marketers should also have a slush fund to fuel those social media fires when they catch.

These allocations are increasingly important as branded content rises in value. Stein points to work that clients like Unilever, Mercedes and Nike have rolled out recently in the branded content sphere. Unilever, for instance, paired with Google on a video-centric hair care campaign that grew out of Google’s insight on the number of searches related to hair care, Stein explains. “That’s real time,” he adds.

“The value in branded content comes from two places – the interruption from advertising is becoming less effective, and with so many mobile devices and people shifting their behavior, advertisers have an opportunity to deliver content that is of value and consumers are going to watch it or share it,” he says.

For more insight into branded content and the approach of Razorfish clients, check out this video interview. We interviewed Stein at the Beet.TV leadership summit on branded video. You can find additional videos from the event here.