Learn more about native advertising. We tell you what types of native advertising exist, how to distinguish them and why to use them in marketing.
Do you remember such a case: you read an interesting fascinating article, and then suddenly you realize that this is not an article at all but only skillfully veiled advertising? How did you feel at that moment? Perhaps, reading has caused you positive emotions and formed a good opinion about the advertised company. But it is also likely that you felt deceived – after all, you spent a few minutes of your life reading an ordinary advertisement. All this is the trick of a phenomenon called native advertising platforms.
What Is Native Advertising?
Native advertising is “natural” advertising: it takes the form and characteristics of the platform on which it is placed. It does not look like a regular advertisement. Therefore, in theory, it should not cause a feeling of rejection in readers, and shall help avoid the phenomenon of banner blindness.
Native advertising captures the world. You can see it on almost all existing advertising platforms:
- on the radio, announcers speak well of the product which producers sponsored the program
- in commercials, the goods are subject to examination or occasional passersby respond
- mimics to editorial advertising is published on various websites.
Native advertising is an advertisement disguised under a natural environment that has external signs of natural information. The marketing term ‘Native Advertising’ is derived from the Latin “natives” – innate. A more accurate understanding is given by biology, in which the native is in a state of nature, not modified, retaining the structure inherent in a living cell. Native advertising can be mimicry for selfless information or entertainment. Nevertheless, an article, video, picture or post has a targeted and accurate marketing message to the target audience, framed with natural content. The forerunner of native advertising is ‘product placement’ – mention of the subject of marketing in works of art.
Tasks Of Native Advertising
- Presenting the ad as naturally and as friendly as possible, which removes opposition to the perception of advertising
- Bypassing the ban on explicit advertising in a number of countries and under certain conditions
- Income from promotional activities.
IAB identifies the following categories of native advertising:
- In-feed promotions – fully sponsored content, mimicking natural and promo in natural content
- Paid contextual search results (the first lines at the topmost search engines or TOP places in social networks)
- Recommended widgets (widget marketing)
- Promoted listing (for example, commercial offers on Amazon)
- IAB banner is a small image embedded in a web page
- Other unique examples that cannot be included in any of the above categories (for example, Pandora-sponsored music playlists).
The Specificity Of Native Advertising
- The complexity of automated placement caused just by the need for successful embedding in the content
- The quality of the native advertising content itself – the difficulty of presenting advertising information in the language of naturalness
- The quality of the content to frame the native commercial – to all that has been said, you also need to take care of the quality of the content itself so that the potential buyer reaches the advertising information smoothly
- In many countries, legislation requires that the sponsored material to be marked as one.
Today, native advertising is one of the most dynamically developing types of promotion. According to Mediapost, consumers interact with native advertising from 20% to 60% more often than with traditional advertising.
In the fuss about native advertising, the real figures are:
- 49% of marketers do not know what native advertising is
- 24% of them are very bad with it
- Another 24% heard something about native advertising but did not do
- And only 3% of marketers are experts in it.
Total: the main properties of native advertising:
- adapts to the site design
- informative
- has an attractive look and title
- necessarily includes a call to action.
