Native advertising has become the latest way for marketers to get their message in front of their intended audience. Different from other forms of advertising such as display or paid search, native advertising is long-form and less disruptive to the user experience. At the same time, native advertising has become one of the ways content marketers expand content’s reach beyond the usual website traffic.
“Creating content or ads that do not disrupt a user’s experience are gold in today’s digital age where pop-ups and intrusive ads take a toll on a consumer’s level of trust for a brand.”
Let’s dive into what native advertising is…
Like all other advertising, native advertising is a directly paid opportunity. You have to pay to get your brand’s content in front of the audience of a third-party site. The opposite, or free version, of this, would be traditional public relations efforts, content marketing or earned media – where placement is done at the discretion of a journalist or published on a brand’s properties or channels. The key to successful native advertising is that the reader doesn’t get a direct promotion of a company’s product or service. The messaging is subtle if present at all that the reader should check out what that company has to offer. Often native advertising appears as content within the page a visitor is viewing. It doesn’t look like an ad. That’s the advantage!
This is why people think that native advertising is content marketing. While the two do operate with similar goals – subtly promoting a company’s product or service – the important difference is that native advertising gets placed outside of a company’s website or media channels to reach new people across the web.
Share what you know
Information-based advertising has found its home with native advertising. Because of the long-form messaging, brands can share information that their audience needs or wants to know. That being said, companies must share content that is engaging, targeted, and useful. Your audience must clearly understand the valuable information that you are offering and/or they must have a feeling evoked by what they read – something that impacts them long after they read what you distributed.
Be aware of the conceptions
With all of the benefits that come with native advertising, some people are pros at sniffing out ads even in their most discrete forms, such as native advertising. This is why in-stream native ads – ones that look exactly like the content that is already on the site. By renting out the space on another site to distribute to an audience different from your own, it is extremely important you don’t impede the user’s normal behavior on that channel as it will make them less likely to skip over your ad. Your brand’s goal should be to make the native advertising look as close as possible to the third-party site and content you are using. However, it is unavoidable that there must be a disclaimer of some sort to let readers know it is a paid opportunity.
Native advertising is worth a try for any brand looking to expand their audience and reach new customers. Share useful information in an engaging way without disrupting the user experience and native advertising could pay off big for your marketing strategy and overall goals!
