Native advertising revenue continues to grow each quarter with the latest IABNZ 2017 Q4 figures showing $5.5m, rising to a 13% share of total Display advertising.
Native advertising has come a long way since its inception. Initially native was reduced mostly to content discovery widgets and now we’re seeing more and more in-feed native ad units across sites.
Native advertising is a tool to reach a wider audience that do not otherwise response to banner advertising.
What’s Native?
A native ad blends seamlessly into the content of a publisher’s page or app. Native adopts the style, location (often in-feed or embedded within other editorial or page content itself), and voice of the publisher’s content. It encourages user-led "discovery" engagement.
Native ads are cross-environment, serving on mobile app, mobile web, and desktop websites.
Key difference from normal Display Ads:
The key difference between normal display ads and native ads is that the publisher is responsible for the creative layout and the advertisers just provide the components, (eg. Images, text, logos, video and so on). The publisher decides how to arrange these assets, designing them to fit both the available space and the surrounding content, whether it appears on their website or in a mobile app.
Key Benefits of Native:
- Higher Engagement – Engage users with relevant content. Native ads often see up to 5-8x higher CTRs than banner ads
- Reduces potential ‘banner blindness’ – creative is often in-feed & ‘Native’ to the Platform
- Increase awareness, leads and sales.
- Seamless Integration– Native creative is responsive and fits the layout of the sites and devices (mobile and desktop) in which it is served.
- Creative Flexibility – Options to make shift changes in creatives when penetration and performance starts to drop.
- Reach amongst Publishers
o For example, Outbrain has access to Stuff.co.nz and the large audience population the publication commands, Taboola has access to Mediaworks (Newshub) & MSN, Yahoo has the Yahoo platform which commands a very heavy female skewed audience, Stackadpt focuses on Mobile native inventory and Google Native is an extension of DBM and has a very large sitelist. - Large variety of Targeting Options – Contextual, 3rd Party, Geo Targeting, Behavioral, Demographic, Device, engagement tracking
- Native ads are often bought on a CPC basis – whilst you can receive good branding/awareness, you only pay for that Audience who are interested enough in your product or service, to click.
Recommendations for Native Ads:
- 2-3 images and 3-4 different Ad copy variations per url.
- Be specific with your title to attract the right audienc
- A strong call to action
- Clearly setup user expectations – eg. If you want the user to view your video use the word "watch"
- Uncluttered and engaging Landing pages
Examples of Native Advertising:
Key Takeouts:
- Ensure your vendor meets the IABNZ standards – Clearly labels your content as paid advertising
- Make sure your vendor has the flexibility to run across multiple platforms
- Create interest not interruption – entertaining and educating content
- Supply multiple headlines and images so creative can be shifted swiftly and optimised.
- Ensure that Blacklists are run, so irrelevant and underperforming sites are excluded
- Each Native Specs Change – different Publishers have different formats
- Ensure that your landing-page content delivers on the Native Ad’s promise.
For further information click here to read ‘Going Native’ Whitepaper
Native Advertising Ad Specs.