Why is native advertising important in your digital marketing strategy?

What is Native Advertising?

Native advertisement is a piece of material, post, video, an infographic that is delivered to an audience via a publisher channel in a way that does not interrupt the platform's native user experience. Simply put, native advertisements are non-intrusive ads that blend well with the publisher's website, thus building confidence and engagement with current and prospective customers compared to traditionally displayed ads.

Native advertising has become ever more streamlined and standardized in recent years. And finding ways to deliver and promote content seems to be improving from time to time. If you are an advertiser who wants to expand your business or a publisher who wants to monetize your website through digitalization, native advertising is perfect for you.

Expanding Native Advertising’s creativity

One needs to reorient his/her thinking to be successful with native advertising for a piece of content on a website or Instagram feed that he/she is trying to share to a wider audience. Ask yourself, does the material really lend itself to the experience of where you would like to buy placement? How will your target audience interpret the content of this ad as it appears? What is it they would like to experience?

When you adapt content from one channel to another, it is vital to consider the user experience in the channel you are buying media placement from. Your audience might otherwise feel that you are not quite getting their point and also disrupting their experience of native advertising.

What brands — and their media and creative teams — should do is think about producing content that fits a native experience, as opposed to taking content that's already created and forcing it into the already existing experience. One way to take a holistic approach to content creation is to create a digital content library for your brand.

Native Advertising in Digital Marketing. 10 reasons to use it!

It's a digital and internet world we live in now and native advertising is one of many ways that digital marketers try to keep up with online consumer behavior. Here are 10 reasons for using native advertising for your next digital campaign, backed by research:

1) First Party Data

Another positive side effect of using programmatic native instead of only sticking to social media sites is that each campaign will build on the last one's success. Instead of trapped data inside walled gardens, campaign-level data is stored on the platform so you can double down on what works, making each campaign smarter than the last.

2) Organized and advanced targeting

Any form of targeting imaginable, whether it’s contextual, demographic, psychographic, location-based, device-based, or intent-based, native advertising allows that. It can even target users located in specific companies and institutions with StackAdapt (something that we call B2B targeting). If you're a car rental company, for example, you should target airports where people will likely need your services. Seventy-one percent of recent survey respondents prefer advertisements targeted to their tastes and shopping preferences, meaning that the secret to attracting new consumers is personalized targeting accessible through programmatic native advertising.

3) Easier Work

With native advertising, conversion attribution is much easier than with any other type of programmatic ads. As Pecherskiy points out, "attribution with native is made much easier because conversions are usually measured (and recommended) only after the click." Essentially, the focus on post-click experience of native advertising, where conversions are concrete on-page actions such as sign-ups, form fills or purchases, makes all work done easily trackable.

4)  High CTR’s

Native ads often see up to 5-8x higher CTRs than banner ads, due to their in-feed placement and adaptable design. As people spend a lot of time on mobile devices and tablets, the use of native advertisements in those can be beneficial. Currently, the average US adult spends about 86 hours a month glued to their phone, bouncing between multiple screens while consuming content and making purchases. According to various predictions, by the end of 2020, native ads will account for 63% of mobile display ad revenue.

5)  Non-troublesome

Seventy percent of consumers say they prefer to learn about a brand through content, rather than traditional advertising. Native ads, unlike traditional pop-ups, act as an extension of the browsing experience. Native advertising fits seamlessly into the browsing behavior of the average web user by fitting the form and function of a given webpage, making them more likely to take an interest in your content and ultimately, convert.

6) High commitment

On average, consumers who click on native ads spend as much time reading the content click-through as they would on the average publisher site. That, of course, depends heavily on the quality of the content to start with. StackAdapt created a pricing model called Cost per Interaction (CPE) to help promote high-value content, whereby a company only pays after a user has spent 15 seconds on its content.

7) Brand Loyalty Growth 

Native advertising represents a unique opportunity to share your story about your brand. The combination of imagery, headline and description allows advertisers to state their message properly; reflect their demographic goal, and also provide contextual detail on the product or service’s benefits, principles, and history. The click-through content offers the possibility to push the message even further beyond the ad.

8) Price Efficient

Ultimately, higher click-through rates result in a lower cost per click and lower cost per customer purchase. According to Vitaly Pecherskiy, Co-Founder and COO, "With conversion rate held equal, the cost per action will be lower, whether it's getting the user to spend time on the content or complete a form."

9)  Production at Scale

46% of brands "are not sure that they feel the impact of their social media efforts," according to Adweek. And with the new Facebook algorithm deprioritizing posts from businesses, brands, and the media, businesses will have to look for alternative ways to stand out, thus introducing native advertising in their digital marketing strategies. Side Platforms such as StackAdapt empower brands to serve native, video, and display ads across thousands of publisher sites, from big names such as the New York Times and CNN to contextually relevant sites only your specific demographic target has heard about.

10) Adoption across industry

Native programmatic advertising is a multi-billion dollar sector. And while social media still accounts for most of that expenditure, social numbers are falling in favor of non-social publisher sites: "We 're seeing a huge increase in non-social publishers adopting in-feed ads and video,"eMarketer's Lauren Fisher says, "Coupled with continuing progress on the programmatic native front, this will accelerate non-social native display expenditure."

Instagram and Facebook affecting native advertising

The visual platform has become the gold standard for what native advertising expects of people. Instagram's material that performs well has a similar look and feel. Same goes with Facebook. And now, consumers expect the same look and feel on the web and in applications that are not exclusively social networksor related to news.

Instagram is the best example of getting people engaged with the content that they expect. Now, marketers simply need to expand the authentic, custom content created for Instagram and Facebook to the native advertising opportunities that we have available.

Who all does benefit from Native Advertising?

Native advertising is beneficial for brands that have to infuse more authenticity into their media. It showcases the leadership thinking and relevance of business to consumers without disrupting their experience on any platform (i.e. social media, Amazon, apps). Native advertising brings brands and people together in a more authentic way by means of better targeting and personalization technology.

Think of a brand that has generic creative content running over multiple channels. To reach more of its target market with its content, within its space the brand needs to be seen as a leader in thought. This is extremely true of B2B brands that have content — blogs, whitepapers, videos — which demonstrate their industry expertise. B2C brands however need content that goes beyond showing their goods. And all types of companies need some means for their material to reach a wider audience. It is here that native advertising comes to play.

Creation of a holistic advertising strategy on digital media

Brands will concentrate on strategic advertising planning, which means looking at their business strategies and bringing together plans and objectives that make sense for their marketing dollars and what they want to do with it.

For a holistic strategy to be successful, you need to organize your team to approach it from an agnostic perspective. That means first not looking at the channels and platforms, but the market priorities and the prospects available through all the networks. It's important to have a good understanding of all the levels and opportunities that will produce results for your brand to place ads in experiences.

It is also important to have your marketing team collaborate with your social team to help encourage the development of content and the cross-channel interaction all teams generate. Consider what your brand does in the social field and what it does in the display and content strategy. For better engagement with your audience, you might find inspiration from either team to carry over to another.

Conclusion

Native ads will help you produce the best sales for your company. It creates higher searches and sales for your website because it is directly proportional to the marketing techniques used for content. Native ads have a higher sell-to-buy ratio than other mainstream media.

This leads to the spread of the website's name which ultimately promotes branding. As modern-day readers are used to seeing native ads as compared to traditional old-school ads, native ads will generate more purchases for a brand as compared to other ads.

So now you know what exactly native advertising is and how it can help the brands in current digital marketing strategy.

About Creative Thinks Media

Creative Thinks Media a single-point advertising company providing advertising and branding services based in India. They specialize in Radio, outdoor, and Online Media. Since 2008, the advertising company has helped many businesses to reach their target audiences.

Creative Thinks Media has created the perfect combination for modern marketing and commercial advertisement services, specializing in advertising on radio, advertising in TV, commercials, print advertising etc. and also in modern internet and social media advertising including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mail, etc.