What is Native Advertising?

You may have heard the term native advertising, but you don’t know exactly what it means or how to differentiate it from other forms of advertising. Luckily, native advertising isn’t all that hard to understand once you know what you’re looking at, so today we’re going to explore how to tell if you’re looking at native advertising, why it works so well, and how to make it work for your own business—no matter where your customers are in the sales funnel.

If you’ve ever browsed through your favorite news sites, watched a movie trailer on YouTube, read an article on LinkedIn, or looked at the Facebook page of one of your favorite brands, then you’ve experienced native advertising firsthand. Although it’s becoming more popular by the day, many people aren’t aware that native advertising even exists, and might not be aware of how it can benefit them. In this article about native advertising, we’ll help you discover what it is and why it works so well.

Native advertisement is ads that are cohesive with page design look and feel that it feels as though it was supposed to be part of the page. They are found all over in social media feeds, search engine results pages, content recommendations, and more. The key is they are less disruptive ads. Before the age of digital ads, there were product placements. You still see these today when you watch commercials and TV shows. Native advertisement is todays’ modern digital ads.

The native advertisement also helps with pull vs push marketing. When we are talking about push marketing we are doing offers and sensational headlines to get a user’s attention. Educational marketing or pull marketing is driving someone in by teaching them about your product or service. This can also be seen in the definition of outbound vs inbound marketing. Click-through rates for educational pull advertisements vs push advertisements can be up to 10 times higher.

Why Does Native Advertising Matter?

Native advertisement could be the answer to IOS 14 issues we see because ads can not only be placed by audience targeting but they can also be placed by content on the pages. The difference is where the data is collected. It’s not just your online behavior, but your offline behavior too, such as when you use your credit card. It’s first-party data and will not be part of the cookieless world we are heading into.

Native advertising is not a new marketing trend, but it is becoming more and more popular every day. Essentially any time your brand reaches out to consumers with a message that looks like any other form of content or information (i.e., content marketing) you are engaging in native advertising. It’s all about making sure consumers see your product in an engaging way. Consumers are much more likely to click on what appears to be another quality piece of online content than if they were just presented with an ad for a product.

Native advertising also helps with ad fatigue and ad blindness. When someone knows an ad is an ad they are to become fatigued by seeing it and this is overcome with native advertisement. This is because a native advertisement blends in with the page where it appears.

Native advertisement is also extremely affordable with CPC’s that mirror some of the beginning days of online marketing. When you have a larger sales funnel this can help drive the upstream traffic that you need to remarket too.

Where Is Native Advertising Shown?

We mentioned a couple above that you are likely already familiar with on search results pages like Google called Google ads, Social placements on places like Facebook ads but the largest network of Native advertising can be found on content sites. When you are reading articles from popular places like New York Times, CNN, Mashable, and more you will see native advertisements. These types of premium spot ads are 44% more likely to be trusted than ads on social media sites. (Outbrain/Lumen). You are placing your ads by using the credibility of these sites.

Who Needs Native Advertising?

Everyone can use it! This will help ensure your content is seen by those most interested in seeing your content. It can be most beneficial for those who have a longer sales cycle in which you need to educate your buyer. Native advertising is a way for brands to advertise themselves in places where their products are naturally relevant.

Native ads are interesting because they don’t just stand out; they become part of what you’re already doing online. They fit right in with your browsing habits and social media feeds—so much so that you might not even realize it’s a marketing message. Many people don’t like advertising, but most love content. Native advertising gives businesses an effective way to create content for their brands without coming off as obtrusive or spammy.

What Are the Native Advertising Platforms?

There are two major publishers for native ads; Outbrain and Taboola.

Taboola is a content discovery platform that makes it easy for you to find and engage with high-quality content from thousands of publishers around the world. Taboola uses contextual relevance and advanced data science to suggest high-quality content from sites that matter to you—automatically. Its native advertising products help brands get more engagement, better insight into their customers, and more people coming back to their sites. Taboola can focus more on direct response advertising than Outbrain.

Outbrain is a content discovery service that displays links to articles, news, and more on participating publishers’ websites. Outbrain has over 300 million monthly unique visitors and is one of the largest content discovery platforms online today. The service recently added native advertising to its offering and announced that it will soon be introducing video content recommendations as well. Outbrain focuses more on being on highly engaged placements such as CNN, Fox News, Mashable, MSNBC, and others.

How Can I Target Using Native Advertising?

Placement Targeting

First, you have your typical placement targeting of:

• What device is your user on; mobile/desktop?
• Are you on a certain browser? Safari for mobile or perhaps chrome?
• Wifi? This might be a good option to select if you have a video to ensure your video plays correctly. Or maybe you have a data-heavy landing page.

Geo-Targeting

• State, DMA, City, and postal code.  All the usual suspect you are used to seeing.

Interest Targeting

• This is based on first-party data that is owned by the platforms.  This means you are not going to run into the same issues you are seeing with Facebook ads and IOS.

Attribute Targeting

• This kind of targeting has been gathered for a long time through popular data vendors such as Bombara, Acxiom, Eyeota, and Nielsen.  They can gather demographic, intent, and professional targeting.

Contextual Targeting

• This ensures that your content runs alongside content that is similar to yours. There is a huge list of types of content, it’s the internet!

Dynamic Remarketing

• This type of remarketing is best for retailers as ads can be seen based o the last product they viewed on your website.

Advanced Placement

• High Impact is placements that can ensure your brand is not next to a brand you do not want to be associated with. It’s considered an exclusive content area in articles and smart feeds.

In Conclusion

Native advertising is becoming a popular choice for today’s companies because it can influence users with less negative brand impact. This form of advertising isn’t going anywhere anytime soon because it delivers excellent results and keeps consumers in a content-filled state. While you may not notice native advertising at first glance, rest assured that they are all around you. Be sure to use native ads whenever possible!