Anyone spoiling for a fight will be disappointed – there’s nothing to see here. If the history of advertising has taught us anything, it is that great advertising and content have coexisted without much conflict for years and I don’t see this changing any time soon. For those trying to inflate what seems to be an industry confidence wobble into full-blown combat, I fear they’ll struggle to find many willing to take up arms and join the battle – it’s a phoney war at best.

Advertising and content have lived side by side for so long because they serve the same purpose but in different ways. They are tools – not necessarily ploughshares – but certainly not swords. Advertising is often the sum of what brands want to tell people – it treats them as consumers. Content is rather different – it respects the audience; we define content as things people want to spend time with.

Traditionally, advertising has been about supplying advertisers with targeted messages at specific times and in particular places – the interruption model we are all familiar with. The best ones have always been pieces of content designed to infect popular culture. Those same history books are littered with examples that we will all be familiar with: the Smash Martians, Flat Eric and the Drumming Gorilla. All share the same characteristics as content – they are visceral, repeatable and scalable.

But that’s where the similarities end. Content is a very different tool with longer-term ambitions and greater opportunities. Content is an editorial channel in itself rather than an interruption within an existing channel.

Content has always been like this and while the distant past has fewer examples, a few case studies stand the test of time. One example is the the Michelin Guide, which was created by brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin, who had simply noted the ascent of a new car-owning middle class and wanted a way to increase the sales of their car tyres by getting people to drive more.

The fundamentals of the problem and their solution stand true today (although the digital revolution has provided us with more opportunities than those of the past). Similarly, Bacardi was looking to increase home cocktail consumption and wanted to get people to care more about flavour, ingredients, taste and provenance.

The content solution was the creation of Drinks Tube, a partnership with Jamie Oliver that includes content in video, magazine, books, social and new products. This content now dominates search around key cocktail serves.

Technological change and the growth of social media have meant that content has moved beyond the simple branded book or radio show to become sophisticated entertainment in their own right, as shown by Felix Baumgartner’s 2012 space dive from the stratosphere, with the backing of Red Bull. It was viewed live on YouTube by 9.5 million people, setting a record for the most live concurrent views on the platform. Our own online film for Sainsbury’s to promote Christmas jumpers reached 28 million views and became the social video hit of the year. Social media means that distribution is now baked into the idea – something that the Michelin brothers can only have ever dreamed of.

Perhaps distribution – putting things that people want to spend time with in front of them at the right time – is where the crucial difference lies. Advertising, great or otherwise, is predominantly parasitic. Advertising takes its form from the host, in this case, content. Endlines can seem like clumsy apologies for interrupting the main event – the editorial content with which the person had chosen to spend their time.

Audiences have become savvy editors, bored of being patronised and being pushed open. Instead, they choose their own content through social channels and on the proliferation of other channels and platforms. The psychology of finding and sharing has become strong.

If there is a battle to be had, it is not between content and ads. It’s with the likes of influential franchises such as Breaking Bad, Serial, Buzzfeed and Minecraft raising the creative bar – this where our competition really lies. It’s a fight that the best agencies are steeling themselves for.

Mark Boyd is the founder of Gravity Road

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