ChannelAdvisor defines native advertising as “a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.” In simpler terms, native advertising is a type of advertising that is designed to blend in with the content around it. This type of advertising is nothing new, but it is becoming more and more popular as brands look for ways to reach their target audiences in a way that feels natural and non-intrusive.
Native ads are a type of advertising that have been around for over 10 years and are able to adapt as media changes. They are now more popular than display ads.
Native advertising allows advertisers to use editorial expertise to create more trusted and valuable channels to reach readers, as compared to banner or traditional display advertising.
This article covers the reasons why influencer marketing campaigns are still popular and effective, as well as how you can use them in your marketing strategy in the next quarter.
What is native advertising?
Paid ads that are designed to look like they are part of the content on the page are called native ads. These ads are meant to not disrupt the viewer’s experience. advertisers hope that by having these ads that look like normal content, viewers will pay more attention to them.
How do you spot native advertising?
Many social media sites use ‘in feed’ native advertising, which can only be seen by the text ‘sponsored’ or ‘recommended’ above or below the post or profile. Blogs and websites often put content recommendations below an article you have just read.
An icon that looks like a small “s” indicates that the content is a paid ad. Google search results often include native ads, which are listings that appear at the top or in the sidebar. Native advertising is less obvious than traditional advertising, so the signs are often more subtle.
Native Advertising vs. Content Marketing
Native advertising is designed to complement the viewer’s experience with the given content and media, rather than disrupt it. By partnering with a third-party that already has a established audience, native ads can engage new audiences that might not have been reached otherwise. It’s a way to get content distributed, rather than the focus being on the content itself. This might sound similar to content marketing, but the goals are different.
The goal of content marketing is to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
How To Grow Your Business With Native Advertising
The studies indicate that native advertising is effective, despite being complex. This guide will show you how to use native advertising to improve your return on investment and click-through rates.
1. Label Your Native Ads
It is important that you indicate when a post is sponsored by marking it as such. This will help maintain your integrity and avoid deceiving your consumers.
This is especially true if you’re new to creating content. With your first few native ads, you might not get the right balance of selling and pitching, so it’s definitely helpful to have a clear label. Just remember that until you find the right balance, your native ad pieces won’t be quite as effective as they could be. However, using labels correctly will keep your brand honest and trustworthy and give you time to master the learning curve without losing customers.
2. Be A Guest Blogger
One way you can promote your products or services is by writing articles for other people’s blogs. This is also a great way to build authority within your target demographic and industry, as well as increase your link building from a major publication.
It’s important to be clear and informative when writing for a site like SEMrush, as they are very particular about the quality of content they approve. Try not to be too promotional, and make sure your submission is valuable and worth their time.
3. Pay Others To Write For You
If publishers didn’t know how to use successful content marketing tools and write native advertisements, they wouldn’t be as successful as they are. DesignRush’s comprehensive guide can help you create an effective content marketing strategy.
4. Experiment With Different Native Ad Formats
There are many options for native advertising that can work for your brand and business goals. Try experimenting with different types of native ads to see which ones work best for your business.
5. Choose The Best Headline
The headline of a piece of content is very important. It establishes the tone for the rest of the article and encourages people to read it. Clickbait headlines have been popular recently because they are effective in getting people to click on them.
Cheap clickbait is shallow and will anger your consumers. Plus, people might click on those links, but often leave abruptly, which harms your search engine rankings and optimization.
If you are unsure about your headline, try writing a shorter, simpler version that accurately describes the article. Include an adjective and active-voice verb to make it more engaging.
6. Be Informative
To increase engagement on your site, write informative, high-quality content that will be interesting and useful to your readers. Try writing how-to guides and tips and tricks, as this type of content is often very successful in driving conversions. For example, North Americans alone have watched more than 100 million hours of how-to content.
7. Match The Style And Form
You should match the style and format of a publication when creating a native advertisement so it does not stand out as an ad. The labeling should state that the post is sponsored, but every other design, layout, topic, and tone of voice choice should make it seem like regular content on the publisher’s website.
8. Sell, But Don’t Underdeliver
You have to be careful not to miss out on pointing out what you will bring to the table with your native ad content piece, or people might not click it, read it, or comprehend it. But if you go overboard, overpromise, and underdeliver, you will be leaving a lot of content consumers unsatisfied – you can risk losing their trust and long-term business. Make sure you market your piece at the exact right amount of value provided.
9. Guide The Consumers Of Content
Try to guide the consumers of your native ad content, so that it is placed smoothly and relevantly. If you do it too abruptly, you will lose their interest. It is important that the ad feels natural as part of the content flow, or people will not accept it. Remember, native ads are called native because they also have to be natural. Don’t try to force the ad.
In the “Dear Kitten” video, Friskies Nicely illustrates how to build and take advantage of an idea. The video is three minutes long, contains a single line about Friskies, and is still highly converting. The Friskies food is placed at the point where people are already interested in the video, so they are more likely to tolerate the promotional content. This video received a lot of attention for the Friskies brand and was viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube.
luck for Friskies, BuzzFeed made a video that did really well, so they made more videos together.
10. Retarget Users Who Engaged With Native Ads
Native ads have a much higher click-through rate than banner ads, so you can use retargeting to get better results with display ads. The users are already engaged with the native ad, so they’ll be more receptive to the display ad. This is because engaging with a native ad headline brings 308 times better customer attention, as opposed to processing images or banners. An processed image might bring instant gratification, but a native advertisement will be impressed in their minds, ensuring consumers think about the product more and remember it more clearly.
3 Native Advertising Examples
1. Altran Engineering in the Financial Times
This advertisement is a combination of digital video, human interest story, and modern technology with an Elon Musk connection.
The video tells the story of a group of students from the Technical University in Valencia, Spain who are competing in theHyperloop Pod Competition run by Musk’s SpaceX company. The Competition is designed to foster innovation and creativity in the development of the Hyperloop, a new mode of transportation that could one day revolutionize the way we travel.
The native video ad has a mix of both student and Altran staff who are working hard to compete and design the best transport pod. The futuristic aspect is that the best and brightest people are working together to improve transportation. It’s presented as a news story, so it doesn’t look like an advertisement for Altran or SpaceX, even though it is promoting both.
What Stood Out
This video is high quality, both in terms of production value and narrative engagement.
2. Land Rover — A Mini Suspense/Action Movie
Land Rover’s Dragon Challenge video is an excellent example of a successful native content marketing campaign. The video is eye-catching, well-made, and suspenseful, and perfectly demonstrates what a successful native campaign should be.
In this hair-raising commercial, we see the world’s first try at driving a car up the stairs leading to China’s Heaven’s Gate landmark. A customized Range Rover SUV makes it up the 999 steps at a spine-chilling angle of 45 degrees.
What Stood Out
Land Rover’s native campaign perfectly embodies their brand identity of being daring, excellent, adventurous, and successful. By promoting it through social media networks, they turned it into an event that broke records and captured people’s attention.
3. Eni Energy on CNN
The Green River Project is an Eni development program that focuses on farming and livestock to improve the livelihoods of local communities in the Niger Delta. The campaign is promoted with native ads on CNN.com, linking back to the Green River Project.
The site is divided into three sections: Past, Present, and Future. The content includes text, imagery, audio, video, personal stories, animations, and illustrations. The complete look and feel reflects an environmental agency, rather than an oil company.
What Stood Out
In this campaign, Eni creates an image of themselves as a 21st century company that is socially responsible and environmentally friendly. This helps them to distance themselves from the criticisms that energy conglomerates often face.
As native advertising continues to grow, marketers and publishers will invest more time and money into it because it is successful. However, it is unclear how ad blockers will impact native advertising in the future. It is possible that they will be the ones who are not affected.
Although it may not seem like it, native advertising is actually bringing in more revenue than any other type of advertisement. In fact, by 2021, it is estimated that native advertising will be responsible for 74% of all ad revenue. This is a continuous trend, showing that it would be beneficial to invest in a native advertising strategy as soon as possible.
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