What is native advertising?

Native advertising is a marketing technique for creating ads that fit within the content of a page and blend in with its content. Native advertising is so consistent with the behaviour of the platform that the viewer perceives it as part of the platform. Users became so annoyed by the usual “head-on” advertising that they learned to filter the content of the page. It is called banner blindness. But native advertising assimilates to the look, feel, and function of the media format in which it appears. This type of advertising neutralizes the effect of banner blindness without any problems.

The advantage of native advertising over banner and media advertising is that it does not really look like advertising, as it does not prevent the user from interacting with the page. It does not highlight the product, but gently presents interesting and useful information. This advertising technique is often used in reputation marketing. “Native ads” do not intrude into a person’s personal space, but at the same time easily remind users of the product.

To distinguish native advertising from other types, you need to know its features:

• focuses not on direct sales, but on brand awareness;
• goes well with the content on the page;
• creates a positive portrait of the advertiser in front of the customer;
• meets user expectations.

How do native ads work?

Native advertising works effectively where its target audience is. A user visits a website with ad space, i.e. where native ads run, and the publisher records all visits. Then they send a request to the ad network it works with. That, in turn, creates the necessary request in the system for advertisers. Advertisers who have offers on a given site’s topic select native ads, pass it on to the advertising network which sends it to an affiliate marketer for publication on the publisher’s website. Thus, site users receive content relevant to their requests, which means they perceive it more calmly than annoying typical advertising.

Users read native ads because they are indistinguishable from their daily content. It seems like an ordinary article, but contains a mention of the brand and product. Advertising can be without a link to the product, although it would be more difficult to evaluate its effectiveness in terms of the number of leads and transitions. But sometimes such promotional materials are used to increase the trust of the audience and its involvement in the brand.

Why is native advertising so effective?

For example, a person has trouble sleeping. They search the Internet for ways to get rid of insomnia, go from site to site in search of some kind of remedy. At a certain point, in one article, they see a mention of pills that helped someone sleep peacefully all night. But we know that this is native advertising, which appeared in the article not by chance, but thanks to the joint work of the affiliate marketer, advertiser and affiliate network. The user is satisfied, follows the link and orders this product. This means they saw the ad, but did not turn it off. This is the effectiveness of native advertising.

The concept of unobtrusive placement in relevant content lies in the heart of this tool. Advertising can be presented in various formats: text, infographics, video. It may appear for a couple of seconds in a movie or even in a blogger’s post. But native ads will always look the same as other content elements on the page. And especially in cases where the goal is to increase brand awareness. Such familiar words as “buy”, “subscribe”, “register” should not be used in advertising.

The effectiveness of native advertising must be constantly monitored. This will help not only to evaluate the result of the advertising campaign, but also to optimize the work. If the goal of launching an ad is to increase brand awareness, the following indicators will help evaluate the effectiveness: site traffic, views, click-through rate and some behavioural metrics (average time spent on the page, page view depth, bounce rate). If it is important for you to boost sales, analyse the conversion of the resource.

Native advertising and content marketing

Content marketing is a method by which a company forms long-term relationships with a target audience through educational, entertaining and branded content. Content marketing is all about creating a continuous storytelling process and not focusing on promoting individual offers. High-quality and relevant content allows you to increase awareness of the product, forms the right perception among the consumer, strengthens their trust and creates a steady contact with them.

Native advertising and content marketing are often confused. These two concepts are designed to provide the customer with relevant information and form the right image about the product. But you cannot just create content — it has to work. Native advertising allows you to attract a large part of the audience to previously created content. And having analytical information about the audience, you can adjust advertising in such a way as to increase the number of customers even more. The symbiosis of content and native advertising allows you to spread information about the brand as much as possible.

Content Marketing: 

• is a continuous process of integration into the marketing strategy;
• serves as a marketing technique;
• concentrates on its own site.

Native advertising: 

• is advertising within the content;
• is a paid service;
• is delivered in the content flow without breaking it.

Benefits of native advertising

Native advertising is about conciseness and naturalness. It offers site visitors a solution to their problem, concisely fitting into the resource. In addition to the fact that this type of advertising does not annoy visitors with its persistence, it has many other advantages:

— It is posted on relevant sites. Native advertising should be organically embedded in the content, so it is worth publishing it on resources that coincide with it in terms of subject matter. Otherwise, it will no longer be native advertising.

— It has a long-term effect due to the viral component of the content. Advertisers use banners that are well remembered by the audience. And even if there is no instant sale, it will definitely happen after some time.

— The concept and features of the platform on which the publication will be posted are taken into account. Switching from site to site, and getting to native advertising, the user should not experience dissonance.

— It boosts confidence in the product and increases brand loyalty in general. Correct native advertising evokes positive emotions in users, does not irritate with constant requests to “buy” or “register”, and all thanks to its conciseness.

— It has a variety of formats and a wide choice of sites for placement. Since native advertising is assimilated with the content on the page, there can also be a huge amount of it.

— Lack of competitors and no possibility of blocking. In order for native ads to be perceived unobtrusively, they usually publish no more than two mentions per page. Otherwise, the user will consider the brand aggressive and too intrusive.

Native advertising wins over the audience because it delicately talks about the product, merging with the content on the page. And its effectiveness depends on how skillfully you can integrate it into the resource on which you publish. It happens that advertising works in a negative way, as it is too imposed on the user. But if you know the target audience of the product and prepare the right material for a specific platform, you can create the right brand image and attract more customers. Experiment with ad formats, analyse ad campaigns, and do not forget about the meaning of native ads.