The opportunities for magazines to collaborate with brands are becoming more prevalent than ever—brands are looking for ways to tap into a magazine brand’s dedicated and attentive audience, while magazines are able to use the funds to create engaging content they might not have otherwise been able to afford.

In the first episode of this year’s magBlast series on sponsored content, Doug Kelly, Publisher and Managing Director of Strategic Content Labs at St. Joseph Media, discusses Toronto Life‘s partnership with Kijiji.

The online classified advertising service wanted to reach deep into the Toronto market and showcase themselves as a platform for where to buy great cars. As commuting is a topic that is much discussed among Torontonians, the Strategic Content Labs team thought the theme would be a great fit with Toronto Life readers.

“Partnering with an advertiser works best when a magazine’s audience aligns with an advertiser’s target audience,” says Kelly. “Once you identify a great story or a great form of content that you want to get across, and you understand how the brand integrates with that, that’s when the magic happens.”

A series of five videos were produced, entitled “Commutes with Toronto Life, in partnership with Kijiji.” In each video, the host interviews a different guest from Toronto, while driving in a car that they had found on Kijiji. The host and guest would talk about commuting and cars.

Though the media industry is constantly changing, Doug asserts, “Magazines are great engagement platforms. They are about deep engagement, whether it is in the mind or the heart, in a way that few other media can compete with. Those opportunities for clients and advertisers to take advantage of that deep engagement that goes on across those platforms, that’s the opportunity.”

Watch now to learn more about Toronto Life‘s very successful partnership in this sponsored content video series. Through “Commutes,” they were able to engage readers not only with the content, but also with the Kijiji brand.

Watch more episodes of magBlast, including the Magazines + Sponsored Events series!