You may not be familiar with the term “native advertising”, but you have surely seen it many times. It is a type of advertising that blends in seamlessly with the platform where it appears, so you don’t notice it as an ad. In this article, we will explore what native advertising is, how it works and where you can use it.
Native Advertising in a Nutshell
Native advertising is a subtle way of promoting a product or service, without being too pushy or intrusive. It often looks like valuable content for the user. For instance, it could be an article about healthy eating from company N, which sells home fitness equipment. The article won’t seem like an ad, but it will have links to company N or sponsored labels.
To qualify as native, an ad must also:
follow the same format as the other content on the platform (videos among videos, articles among articles);
fit the design and layout of the web page where it is displayed;
match the style and tone of the partner platform.
Native ads are hard to tell apart from the regular content on a website. For example, media and banner ads are easy to spot by their appearance: they show up on the side or at the top of the web page as a separate block. But native ads look like normal website content and do not stand out from the background.
The main goal of a native advertising campaign is to create a more appealing and effective advertising message that will boost clicks, sales or conversions.
For example, Refinery29’s article is a smart example of native advertising that sells skincare products. It uses ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can generate various types of content, including a personalised skincare routine, as a hook to capture the reader’s curiosity and attention. It also taps into the reader’s interest in skincare, a hot and relevant topic for Refinery29’s audience, who are mostly young women who care about fashion, beauty and wellness. Then it subtly suggests products that the reader can purchase, without being too pushy or obvious.
How Native Advertising Works
As we have seen, native advertising is a way of disguising ads as regular content on different platforms. A brand pays to post their content on platforms of their choice, such as social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok), websites or search engines.
Then they create a native ad that follows the rules and style of the platform. When the ad is published, it is usually marked with a label such as “ad”, “sponsored”, or “promoted” to let the users know that it is paid content. This is an important way to maintain trust between the platform’s audience and the editorial team.
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Native Advertising Formats and Platforms
Native advertising can take any form of content, such as articles, videos, images,or podcasts. For example, a native ad could be an article with a list of the best video editing apps, a video of unboxing a new gadget or a social media post by an influencer.
Native ads can be placed on various platforms, ranging from websites to social media feeds. Let’s look at some of them in detail.
Recommendation Widgets
You can see these small blocks of native ads as suggestions at the end or side of an article. They have eye-catching headlines and images that lure users to click on them.
Social Media Posts
These look like regular posts on social media platforms, but they have a label that indicates that they are paid by a brand or partner.
For instance, this native Instagram advert was posted by National Geographic Travel as part of the Incredible India marketing campaign, funded by the Indian Ministry of Tourism.
The goal of this campaign was to increase the exposure of their initiative and hashtag #UntamedIndia, which reveals the wild and wonderful side of India.
Sponsored Content
These are articles or videos that are created by or in collaboration with a brand and published on websites that have a partnership with them. They have a label that indicates that they are sponsored or affiliated content.
A good example of sponsored content is the BuzzFeed listicle 15 Bands That Probably Wouldn’t Exist Without Led Zeppelin. It was created in collaboration with Spotify, the music streaming service, and featured popular bands like Tame Impala and Radiohead that BuzzFeed’s readers enjoy. The article also provided links to each band’s Spotify profile, making it a smart way to advertise Spotify and deliver engaging content to music fans.
Custom Content
These are special projects that are designed for a specific brand and appear as interactive content such as quizzes, games or longreads. A perfect example here is a longread article by The New York Times that explores the topic of women in prison, inspired by the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.
The article features interviews, videos, photos and statistics that provide a deeper look into the lives of incarcerated women and the issues they face.
Video Ads
These are videos that feature a brand’s product or service and appear on various platforms. They can be product reviews, event commentary or stories.
You can get even more creative, like advertisers did with a product placement in the YouTube video by Hot Ones, a show where celebrities eat spicy wings and answer questions.
The video features TUMS, an antacid brand, as a sponsor and shows the host and the guest using the product to relieve their heartburn.
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Native Advertising: Pros and Cons
Native advertising is expected to grow by 372% from 2020 to 2025, reaching over $400 million in value. This is because native advertising offers many advantages to both businesses and consumers.
Some of the benefits are:
Higher visibility. Native ads are seen 53% more often than traditional ads and get 40 times more clicks.
No banner blindness. Users tend to ignore direct sales messages, but native ads are integrated with relevant and useful content for the audience, so they do not annoy or bore them.
More social sharing. Native ads are 32% more likely to be shared than traditional ads. If the content is valuable, users may also save it for later.
Blocker-proof. If the native ad is part of the content, such as a sponsored article, ad blockers like AdBlock cannot remove it from the users’ view.
Higher click-through rate (CTR). According to AppNexus, native ads have a CTR that is 8.8 times higher than regular ads.
However, native advertising also has some drawbacks, such as:
Hard to create. Each native ad has to be customised to fit the specific site and audience. You cannot use the same content for different platforms.
Expensive. The cost of native advertising depends on two factors: how much time and money you invest in creating it and how much you pay for publishing it on the platform.
Difficult to measure results. It is hard to assess the return on investment (ROI), impact and effectiveness of a native advertising campaign.
Tips on Creating Native Ads
Here are some things to consider when you create native ads:
Know your audience. Before you create a native ad, you need to understand who your target audience is, what their needs and preferences are and how they consume content. This will help you craft a message that resonates with them and aligns with their expectations.
Choose the right platform. You need to select a platform that is relevant to your product or service, has a large and engaged audience and offers native ad formats that suit your goals. You also need to follow the platform’s guidelines and best practices for creating native ads.
Create valuable content. Your native ad should provide useful information, entertainment or inspiration to your audience, not just a sales pitch. Your content should match the tone and style of the platform and the surrounding content, as well as have a clear and compelling headline, image and call to action.
Measure and optimise. Although it can be tricky, you should track the performance of your native ads and see how they affect your key metrics, such as impressions, clicks, conversions and ROI. You also need to test different variations of your native ads and optimise them based on the results.
Conclusion
Native advertising is a powerful element of marketing strategy that often outperforms traditional types of digital advertising. Thanks to its adaptability and capacity to avoid “banner blindness”, native advertising has become one of the most popular ways to promote products and services in 2023.
