What is Native Advertising?
Native Advertising is creating valuable content and presenting it on a platform in a way that resembles the other content the user is there to see.
Native Advertising refers to a form of paid media that is often used by content marketers. It involves placing paid advertising in a non-disturbing way within a feed.
Native advertising uses media platforms on the Internet to promote a product/service or brand.
Native advertising is the opposite of the online marketing that uses banner images that don’t appear within the main content of a webpage.
Native advertisements emerge directly within the primary content of a webpage. It appears as posts or images that blend in with existing content.
Social media news feed and online newspapers are examples of native advertising.
Native advertising is a type of paid media content in which the experience of an advertisement fits in with the natural form and function of the platform.
# Form – A native ad matches the visual layout of the platform which gives a feel of natural content within that platform.
# Function – A native ad acts with the same consistency as the user’s experience. It functions like any other natural content platform where an ad is displayed.
Native advertising and paid content promotion, from websites such as Columbus, Taboola, and Outbrain are powerful tools for engaging new audiences.
The native advertisements appear at the bottom of well—known content sources like Time, CNN, and Huffington Post are served to users based on a variety of algorithms.
Native advertising works hand-in-hand with content marketing. In a content marketing campaign, your brand is the publisher. You use the brand’s content as a means for building engagement and trust with customers.
Native advertising supports content marketing by driving customer attention to the brand’s content. It’s helpful in expanding the company’s reach and improving customer trust.
There are two main elements which define native advertising as:-
# Native ads are designed to look and feel like the natural content or entire pages of content that appear natural.
# Native ads are designed to behave consistently with the user experience of that platform and function like the content that surrounds them or appear elsewhere on the website.
Types of Native Advertising Ad Formats –
Today brands are constantly finding new ways to integrate their message into interesting content. Native video ads and advertorials are examples of native advertising.
These are not only ways that native advertising objectives can be achieved, but they do provide a good description to help you understand native.
There are different types of native advertisements formats as:-
# In-Feed Ads – These ads are the ones you mostly see on social media. When you have been scrolling through social media feeds, you’d exposed to native advertising.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are examples of social platforms that have in-feed native advertisements. These ads are designed to look like an organic social post.
These ads can be either in any of two forms: Sponsored content or In-feed promotions.
Sponsored content takes the form and function of other content appearing in that particular feed which can be seen on BuzzFeed, Mashable, and Forbes.
In-feed promotions appear in a feed but rather than behaving like content and it directly promotes and links to content on the website.
In-feed ads format is widely used by large social networks channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
It appears on news outlets and social networks in the form of labeled “sponsored content” or what’s been liked or picked as a favorite by a connection.
It’s in story form and matches the surrounding stories, page links, and has been sold with guaranteed placement.
These are showing up in the publisher’s normal content well. These native ads are growing rapidly and it’s not expected to slow-down in recent time.
These ads can link to sponsored content and suppose the form of an embedded video, or encourage downloading an app.
# Paid Search Ads – These are direct-response ads that are promoted alongside search results. AdWords ads displayed on top of the organic search results.
These qualify as native ads because they appear in a format and layout which matches the organic search results, but they’re indicated as sponsored.
Direct response ads are one of the oldest native ads formats and first to become popular among advertisers.
The advertiser pays to be listed at the top of search engine results for certain keywords. In Google, these ads are created to look like the organic listings in the search engine results page.
When you enter the search query, then paid search ads to show up in the top four positions. They differentiate the listings by adding the “Ad” icon to ensure that these are ads.
# Recommendation Widgets – These native ads look like real recommendations from a webpage, but it’s actually a source of revenue for the publisher.
Widgets are labeled as “Recommended for you” or “You may also like”. These ads are shown on rich-site media and users are likely to click on them.
When you are reading an article on a publisher’s website, you will be given recommendations for other articles to read.
It’ll pull related content from “Around the Web” based on topics and keywords, and list them on the sidebar or bottom of a media outlet’s website. These ads are shown as “related posts” or “sponsored posts” at the end of stories.
Recommendation widgets contain pictures and short descriptions linking to long-form content like a story from the outside platform.
This sponsored content is set-up by paid advertising campaign through a third-party platform which includes Outbrain, Taboola, and Columbus, etc.
# Promoted Listings – Promoted listings are highly targeted and relevant, often based on the user’s recent behavior on the web.
The post could be products from a recently visited e-commerce website or recent searches on Google. These ads are used by e-commerce sites like eBay, Amazon for advertising purposes.
When you are shopping on a website like Amazon and looking for a certain product there may be native advertising on the page.
On the right-hand side, you can see sponsored listings. The listings look very similar to the organic listings, but the seller has paid to be in this location.
They’re similar to In-feed promotions and promoted listings earn their distinct category because these ads are found on websites that don’t have a traditional editorial content.
They fit into the browsing experience and are presented to look identical to products or service offered.
It functions similarly to paid search units to appear on e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy. Yellow Pages and Yelp are examples of websites that allow for listings to be promoted.
# Advertorials – These are placed alongside editorial content based on relevant topics and keywords linked to an Off-site page.
It’s one of the oldest forms of native advertising in which business can sponsors entire article on a content website. The business writes content and pays for it to be in print publication or on a website.
# Custom Ads – These are the ads that don’t quite fit into the other ad formats and are new forms of advertising.
With custom content, the advertisers and publisher team up to make websites with content that users might find relevant.
These are too platform-specific to permit business to their own categories like customized playlists on Pandora and Spotify.
There are new applications and technologies that allow businesses to create custom and sponsored content on the platform like SnapChat.
There are location filters that businesses can use for their events. Large brands can create their own filters that are available to users.
Sponsored content is also a form of custom content, but it’s more native in nature which looks and feels like all other content on the website. Sometimes the sponsored content is written by the advertiser and posted on the publisher’s website.
How Native Advertising Works –
Native advertising appears on every major media platforms which are accessible on the Internet. Native advertising is seen as more organic content to the unusual user.
It’s important to follow the natural feel of that platform when creating native advertisements and choose creative.
Facebook is the largest platform where businesses use their page to create posts to promote product or brand.
Promoted posts will appear in the news feeds of the Facebook users which look-like typical posts. Native advertising is used on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other social media platforms.
A native ad looks more like a piece of content that a user is already seeing on social media websites. It improves the clickability of the ad and provides more value to the customer.
# Native Ad Placement – The sponsored ad carries a clear designation of sponsored content. It looks identical to the articles that appear above it in the news stream.
# Native Ad Content – When you click the native ad, you’re redirected to a page that lives on the website. Here, an article is positive promotional content.
Brands and advertisers love native advertising because the click-through-rate tends to be much higher than traditional advertisements.
Benefits of Native Advertising –
The native ads provide a great opportunity for creative exposure, and advertisers can be sure that users already enjoy the format in which the ad will be presented.
There are many reasons to consider integrating native ads into your digital media planning strategy:-
# Contest Ad Blindness – The digital landscape is mixed-up with display ads and customers have become expert to completely ignoring these ads.
Now advertisers must deliver content which naturally integrates into publishing layouts.
Native ads aren’t disturbing and they don’t push customers into interacting with content. But they engage users in a mutually beneficial way.
# Leverage Brand Loyalty – Paid media allows you to reach millions of customers. Native ads allow leveraging the authority of someone else’s publication or brand to strengthen your advertising in newspaper and magazines.
# Can Go Viral – Native ads can go viral with the possibility of over display. Native advertising gets more attention and easily shared because they have a unique URL.
Native ads can be quickly posted on social media channels with one click. Sponsored tweets and Instagram photos can include hashtags which make them more discoverable.
It contains comments sections that allow customers to interact with a brand directly.
Most native ads exist in formats which allow for live engagement with customers like entertainment and news media websites, Facebook posts, lifestyle blogs, etc.
# Measurable ROI – Native content marketing is the creation and distribution of content to attract new audiences, create awareness, build trust, and increase conversions.
Native advertising makes content creation investments work harder by getting in front of the right audiences and delivering measurable performance.
# Prospective Channel – Native advertising is effective at the mid-funnel channel to drive down the acquisition costs of lower.
Native advertising does extremely well in engaging audiences and high ratio of first-time website visitors.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Native Advertising Campaign –
You can take advantage of the benefits of native advertising with carefully looking at few tips as:-
# Content Creation – You should consider a few points before taking the final step into native advertising campaign as the first step which includes:-
##### Create a Mission Statement – What is your campaign trying to achieve?
##### Collect Data – Collect Facebook Insights, Google Analytics or competitor analysis.
##### Create Buyer Persona – Who is your target? What do they like? Where do they get online? What do they see online? You can create a buyer persona template on this data.
##### Content Strategy – You should create a content strategy which includes a variety of content types such as blog post, articles, or infographics.
##### Consider Trends – You should look online to plug into existing conversations to see what works and what doesn’t with tools like Social Mentions, and Google Trends.
# Ads Platform – When you want to promote your ideas on a native ads platform, then you must focus on the suitability of the platform:-
##### Social Media – There are few pros and cons of social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn:-
>>>>>>>>>> Pros – Highly Targeted (Mainly Facebook), Low Budget, and Flexible
>>>>>>>>>> Cons – Very much noise from other advertisers, easily missed or skipped
##### Publishers Editorial Streams – This type of native ads platform like Outbrain, and Taboola have few pros and cons:-
>>>>>>>>>> Pros – Low barriers to entry (Low CPC), Drives traffic, Geographically targeting.
>>>>>>>>>> Cons – Lead to high bounce rate, Limited tracking, No quality control for readers, Waste of budget.
# Ads Alignment – You should make sure that your ideas are aligned with your publisher. You can protect your reputation as well as the publisher’s reputation by doing this.
# Mark Your Ads – You should clearly mark your advertisements with “advertorial”, “sponsored”, or “promoted” so that viewers don’t feel mislead when they realize after reading someone else’s content.
# Content Marketing – Native advertising isn’t about selling your product. It’s a form of content marketing that offers helpful information for customers.
It’s content with an inbuilt value that means advertising things like case studies, blog articles, or white papers.
# Measurement – Engagement is the key metrics to measure the performance of native ads campaign.
It may include page views, click-through-rates, or time spent reading the content. You can use other social media sharing, brand lift and cost per click.
Difference between Native Ads & Traditional Ads –
Native advertising is integrated into the flow of existing editorial content. In traditional ads, you can imagine video ads that play before the actual video content begins.
In native advertising approach, brands work with the content creators to place their product within the video itself.
Conclusion – Native advertising has been proven to be a highly effective form of marketing. Native advertising will continue to grow and flex to meet the demands of advertisers and customers. It’s opened up exciting new opportunities to advertisers and publishers beyond the advertorials and display ads reach.