It’s the online magazine produced by an energy drink company that showcases what living adventurously really means.

It’s the newsletter you get from a recruiting agency that talks not only about careers, but paints picture about the future of work.

It’s the video channel where an art supply company interviews contemporary painters about their approach to creativity.

These are all exampled of “owned media,” the kind of branded content that is editorial in nature and often becomes the most compelling stories a company can tell.

The problem is that most owned media operates in isolation. No one treats it as a category of media the way we look at newspapers, magazines or radio programs.

The Owned Media Observer is a podcast that aims to address that by applying media criticism to these forms of branded content. We’ll analyze the quality of individual digital magazines and other owned media vehicles for the quality of information, style, innovation and of course, the degree to which the brand’s interests get in the way of the audience experience.

This is a podcast for:

• Content marketers that want to do better work
• Media professionals who want to understand their new competition
• Audiences of all kinds that want to figure out the sources of information emerging all around them.

Hosted by Shane Schick, the Editor-in-Chief of B2B News Network and a longtime content marketer to some of the world’s biggest brands.