Beginner’s Guide To Native Advertising

WHAT IS NATIVE ADVERTISING?

Native advertising is a type of paid advertising that matches the form and function of the website or platform in which it appears.

Wherever native advertisements are placed, they’re designed to blend in with surrounding content and provide people a better advertising experience. Native ads are most commonly seen, or known to be associated with social media news feeds, but are increasingly being integrated across premium publisher sites on the open web.

Publishers continue to replace traditional banners with different native ad types in a variety of placements. Native ads are served within their content feeds, headers, footers, left & right rail and within recommended content presented at the end of online articles.

HOW IT WORKS

Programmatic Native Advertising

Programmatic native advertising uses software to buy native ads in real time and enables more advanced targeting and measurement strategies than integrated native or direct buys can deliver. Programmatic native typically includes three primary ad types (i.e. native in-feed, content recommendation widgets and native video) and enables a wide range of targeting, optimization and performance measurement options.

BENEFITS OF NATIVE ADVERTISING

Native advertising delivers measurable content ROI.

Native content marketing is the creation and distribution of content to captivate new audiences, create awareness, build trust and increase conversions. Distributing branded content through native advertising makes content creation investments work harder by getting that content in front of the right audience and delivering measurable performance.

Native is a powerful prospecting channel.

Acquiring new customers and driving incremental sales revenue is a common objective amongst marketers. One thing that native does extremely well is introduce engaged audiences and high ratios of first time site visitors. Native is effective at any stage of the sales funnel, but is particularly effective when used as a mid funnel channel to drive down the acquisition costs of lower in the funnel.

Native ads are more effective than banners.

The verdict is in. Banner blindness is real. Banner ads are no longer effective and attempts by the advertising industry to make ads more interruptive has backfired. Native ads are different. They politely introduce consumers to content that they chose to engage with. Native ads create the opportunity for brands to share their story, add value during the decision journey and build trust.

ACCORDING TO SHARETHROUGH AND THE STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
  • People know native ads are ads and they don’t care
  • The mechanism by which native works goes beyond the click
  • Consumers see native ads 53% more frequently than display ads
  • Consumers looked at native ads 2% more than editorial content
  • Native ads registered an 18% higher lift in purchase intent than banners

Explore Our Native Ad Types >

Learn how to get the most out of your native campaign.

Explore our native ad types.