The Key to Native Advertising
Native advertising burst onto the scene in 2013,
but most Internet professionals find it difficult
to come up with an actual definition. The reason
is it encompasses so many different practices,
techniques and technologies today that it can
be hard for even for the savviest and most
experienced to pin down.
“Native” is essentially an online advertising method
in which the brand being promoted makes a
concerted effort to gain attention by providing
“content in the context of a user’s experience” — in
other words, make advertising seem less intrusive
and the likelihood users interact with it increases
dramatically. The trend comes none too soon for
brands looking to deepen engagement and generate
a better response from their campaigns.
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“There is a renaissance underway in digital
advertising that is driving brands, publishers and
consumers to communicate with each other in more
personal and natural ways,” said Patrick Albano,
vice president, social, mobile and innovation sales,
Yahoo, and co-chair, IAB Native Advertising Task
Force, in a statement. “Native advertising is an
important piece of this evolution.”
The most relatable form of native advertising is
that of the “advertorial” — wherein paid ads are
positioned as editorial content. In the digital age,
however, native ads are taking on a variety of forms.
Today, videos, images, widgets, music and even
social media updates are being positioned as native
formats.
The IAB is well aware of the native advertising
trend and recently released its own “Native
Advertising Playbook” in order to help the industry
establish a common lexicon, an evaluation
framework and some disclosure principles. The IAB
highlighted six core interactive ad formats that are
currently being used within the native ad landscape
and provided some much-needed guidance for
evaluating marketplace opportunities. Read more
about these formats and how your company can take
advantage in part two of our native advertising primer
on the Web at wsm.co/adprimer.
The arrival of the IAB’s native ad playbook comes
none too soon. IZEA released its fourth annual “State
of Sponsored Social” report recently and found that
“content sponsorship” has become more lucrative
than display advertising. In fact, 55.7 percent of
influencers now say they make more money from
sponsorships than online display ads. Perhaps most
interesting is that a majority of brand marketers (61
percent) this year have pursued the compensation of
social media influencers (a 5 percent increase year-over-
year) in the form of money, goods, services,
discounts or other incentives. Among owners of
social channels, 92 percent say they would accept
compensation to promote something through their own platforms.
“Brand advertisers and editorial are working more
closely than ever to develop mutually beneficial,
scalable social sponsorship programs that are both
high impact for brands and profitable for creators,”
said Ted Murphy, founder and CEO,
IZEA, about the report. “Increasingly
we’re seeing brand marketers dial
down their investments in online
display, while dialing up a wide variety
of sponsored social channels and other
native advertising initiatives.”
Of course, native advertising could
easily come back to haunt the very
advertisers it purports to benefit.
ChoiceStream released results of its
“2013 Survey of Consumer Opinions
on Audience Targeting and Online
Advertising” in Nov. 2013, which
took a deep look at the “how and why” of consumer
behavior when it comes to digital advertising and
purchasing. Perhaps the most interesting finding is
that 86 percent of respondents felt native ads were
trying to trick them and they didn’t appreciate it. Not
exactly a ringing endorsement of the practice — but
it is certainly not calming interest.
In mid-Dec. 2013, mobile network Appia
announced the launch of Discovery Ads, a native
ad format for publishers of mobile websites and
applications that could prove quite appealing to
advertisers. The new format affords
advertisers an opportunity to
customize the design of their ads,
and experiment with copy, calls-to-action
and imagery thanks to Appia’s
real-time optimization platform and
A/B testing environment. Ultimately,
that’s the kind of control that Appia
hopes will appeal to advertisers who
are increasingly demanding greater
performance for their ad spend.
Keep up to date with emerging trends and best practices in Internet advertising at wsm.co/netad14.
“Discovery Ads represent
the next generation in mobile
advertising formats that we’re
confident our customers will be excited to use,”
said Jud Bowman, CEO of Appia. “At Appia, we’re
consistently looking for new ways to create the
best user experience while driving further mobile
monetization for both advertisers and publishers.
Discovery Ads promise real-time performance insight that will create optimized mobile user
acquisition.”
Appia is far from the only player in the native ad
space. Twitter-owned mobile ad network MoPub
announced a programmatic-enabled native ad
solution for mobile apps recently,
which it hopes will provide publishers
the opportunity to work directly with
advertisers and drive more revenue
from the nearly 100 demand partners
on the MoPub marketplace.
Native advertising has not been
a scalable or accessible solution
for mobile app developers to date,
but since it offers publishers an
opportunity to monetize an app (or
website) without the interference of
a supply side network and ads can be
designed so they match the content,
they’re of increasing interest to both publishers
and advertisers. Messaging app and MoPub client
Tango, for example, is using two native ad units
presently — an expanded unit in the news feed
and another compact version in the chat tab.
“Working with MoPub means we don’t have to
put in the effort to create a custom solution from
scratch for every advertiser that we work with, so
we can focus on our app and our business,” said
Tango’s Head of Advertising Richard Rabbat. “The
MoPub Native Ad standard makes it easy for us to
both work directly with advertisers
like Supercell and with other
advertisers on MoPub Marketplace.
We’re excited to launch this with
a partner that shares our vision to
make advertising a great experience
for our users and our ad partners.”
Native advertising in the digital
age has a complicated future. For
every Facebook that shutters a native
ad program (such as it did recently
with its Sponsored Stories offering),
another platform will emerge to
give advertisers and publishers an
opportunity to attract an audience and monetize
interactions. Where there’s opportunity to establish
a brand as a credible choice, advertisers will take it
and publishers will sell it.


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