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How native advertising amplifies content among B2B advertisers’ target audiences

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By Laura Bakopolus Goldstone.

B2B thought leadership needs to be supported by sponsored content

You probably engage with sponsored content several times each day and don’t even realize it — which means it’s working as intended.

Sponsored content uses native advertising to deliver companies’ content to their intended audiences on platforms where they are already engaged. Over the last few years, native advertising has cut through the noise of a seemingly saturated digital ad industry.

While all ads promote a visual representation of a brand with some corresponding message, native advertising takes the ad a step further by amplifying thought leadership in a place where the reader is actively going to seek out new information. Instead of the advertiser pushing ads onto audiences, ads are placed within publications audience members already visit and enjoy, increasing the likelihood that the ad will resonate with the reader.

It’s no surprise that sponsored content through native advertising yields an increase in brand affinity and purchase intent. As a proven way to resonate with audiences, sponsored content could be the answer B2B advertisers have been seeking.

A primer in native advertising, content’s best complement

Sponsored content is backed by native advertising, which is a form of digital advertising that places paid ads within the format of a webpage, mimicking its style and user experience. Native ads are clearly labeled “sponsored” or “paid,” but because their subject matter tends to align with that of the article on the page, audience members tend not to mind that they are reading ads — a feat the digital advertising industry has always sought to achieve.

Instead of simply being glossed over, the text on the ad is highly likely to be read — not just seen. Because native ads are placed within an article, the reader has already read several lines before his eyes reach the ad. Therefore, the reader is already in the habit of reading lines from left to right and the native ad’s headline fits right into that pattern. In fact, reading a native advertisement yields 308 times more consumer attention than processing image content, resulting in increased brand recall and a higher likelihood that the brand’s message will resonate with the reader.

Native advertising is extremely valuable to B2B marketers because it supports thought leadership. It takes a content asset that has been strategically crafted with the target audience in mind and it creates a figurehead for that asset in the form of a native advertisement. That ad is then placed in front of viewers in places they prefer to engage, increasing the likelihood of a positive experience with the brand.

In essence, native is more about the content than just brand awareness. It is about an idea resonating with someone more than it is about a brand’s graphic looking appealing. And when we connect over an idea rather than a look, the connection is more meaningful and more likely to last.

If content is king, then native advertising is the megaphone that amplifies its message to the masses.

Choosing the right partner

Marketers see value in running sponsored content through social networks and other experienced publishers. However, they may find themselves going up against walled gardens that are hard to scale or report on; as such, brands should inquire about scaling and analytics capabilities prior to deploying native ads with a tech vendor. If reaching your audience at scale and knowing how well your campaigns ran are important factors in understanding how native advertising fuels your business goals, then these two elements may be key differentiators when choosing the best technology company to deploy your sponsored content.

If your technology vendor offers both, native advertising can also be paired with display advertising to enhance engagement and achieve more than 18 percent higher lift in purchase intent, 9 percent lift in brand affinity, and 200 percent more visual focus as editorial headlines. Utilizing both forms of advertising can provide a stronger approach than only leveraging one.

Advertisers may also find that diversifying their media plan will strengthen their offering by providing them with a customized, best-of-breed option. Complementing existing native advertising efforts with other sponsored content solutions can contribute to a well-rounded ad campaign that will expand the reach of your most valuable content among your highest valued business audience members.

By supporting existing campaigns with sponsored content, B2B advertisers can position themselves as thought leaders among their target business audiences while increasing the likelihood of resonating on a deeper level and improving brand affinity. Implementing this approach will put B2B advertisers in front of their customers in a more positive light and will likely fuel longer term relationships, thus improving business outcomes for all involved.

By Laura Bakopolus Goldstone

Manager of content marketing, AdDaptive Intelligence

Sourced from DIGIDAY

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In-Feed Native Ads: Measuring Native Advertising

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By Julien Verdier

As published by our co-founder, “Native advertising is a form of paid media where the advertisement is relevant to the consumer experience, integrated into the surrounding content and is not disruptive.” The advertisement is in-feed and is relevant to the content on the page. As CEO of a native advertising platform, I’m seeing the native advertising industry experience phenomenal growth, especially on mobile.

When introducing native to your marketing campaign, you need a clear view of what you want the results to be. In order to succeed with your in-feed native ads, you first need to define what success actually looks like. What is the metric you are going to use to determine whether or not your native advertising is a success? For the majority of in-feed native advertising campaigns, key performance indicators (KPIs) typically fall into one or more of the below:

CTR: Click-through rates (CTRs) are often used as a KPI, particularly when it comes to programmatic native advertising.

Visits: Rightly or wrongly for many advertisers, the No. 1 criteria for success when they run native advertising campaigns is: How many visits did it bring to my site?

Dwell Time And Bounce Rate: These two KPIs often go hand in hand with visits as a measure of success. Dwell time is the measure of how long a visitor spends on a specific page, so it can be used — in a slightly crude fashion — as an indicator of whether someone read and enjoyed the content on the page.

Bounce rate, which is a key search metric, is the indication of what the user did after landing on the page. Did they click back or close the window, or was their interest piqued enough by this page to move along to other pages on the site? Both are metrics used to understand the stickiness of content and websites, and to tell if visitors enjoy these pages.

Engagement: This is a similar KPI to dwell time, but the process of measurement is very different. While dwell time is typically measured through the advertisers’ website, usually via Google Analytics, engagement is a metric that is usually measured via a publisher, native technology platform or another third-party ad-tracking tool.

What does it mean? It is a measure of how long someone engaged with your content. This could be how long, on average, someone spent reading your branded content published on a site. Or it could be the average length someone spent watching your brand video.

Shares And Likes: For many advertisers, native advertising is a tool to be used to generate shares of their content and likes for their pages. This is particularly true, though not exclusively, with social media advertising. For many advertisers using social media advertising, they are looking for as many shares of their content as possible — shares that hopefully translate into lots of likes for their social media profiles, and more visitors to their site. But, ultimately, shares equal extended reach for your brand’s marketing messages and increase the available pool of relevant customers you can engage with at any point in the future.

Sales And Leads: While soft metrics, such as engagement and visits, are very popular measures of success, native advertising is increasingly being used as a pure direct response marketing channel. For these advertisers, success is easy to quantify: Did I create any sales leads? Did I manage to generate any sales as a result of this native advertising?

Sophisticated advertisers increasingly use native advertising in conjunction with other forms of digital advertising for strong sales results. When combined with data, retargeting, cookies and attribution modeling, native advertising is a growing part of the modern sales lead marketing mix.

Challenges Of Measuring In-Feed Native Advertising

The onset of native and content-based advertising solutions has presented the industry with a complex challenge: How do we establish meaningful and consistent measures that underpin the digital trading environment and allow the evaluation of campaign effectiveness?

Using standard metrics will give you the numbers you want — the impressions, reach, clicks, etc. And through this, you will be able to show whether a native ad was successful compared to other advertising formats. However, I believe these serve as a reporting comparison but do not give full insight into the value of native advertising. How you measure a native ad should differ according to the campaign and its objectives and be tailored toward this.

In June 2016, the IAB U.K.’s Content and Native Council published its Content and Native Measurement Green Paper, in which our company weighed in, along with 15 other companies. If the paper has a conclusion, it’s that there is much work to be done to be open and transparent with all data points for consistent, algorithmic measures and techniques to be developed.

The point on which everyone agreed is that current digital trading metrics were only a part of the solution and that, as with traditional media, there has to be an investment in understanding how people behave with content-based and native advertising before establishing algorithms that measure those behaviors.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels

By Julien Verdier

CEO of ADYOULIKE, AI-Powered Native Advertising platform.

Sourced from Forbes

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Native Video study on open web highlights consumer shift

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By Dale Lovell

he power of video advertising may be well documented, but as consumer behaviour changes amid familiarity with video browsing on mobile devices, marketers who think the rules of engagement for digital video have already been written – and that there is a one size fits all approach – should think again.

The rise and effectiveness of native video on social media has been well researched to date. Engagement rates, reach, frequency and return on investment studies all show positive associations. But until now, there have been few studies showing the rise and performance of native video formats across the open web, specifically on premium publisher environments, where in-feed native video formats are becoming increasingly common.

We recently sought to fill that void through an analysis of more than 30 million in-feed video views run across our platform from January to April 2018. While we expected to be able to report findings on native video on the open web that were in line with the positive findings in social media, we didn’t expect that our findings would challenge the very notion of ‘what works’ in native video. But that’s precisely what happened.

Conventional wisdom in the video space, based on social data, has indicated that less is more when it comes to native video advertising, with many espousing that anything longer than 6 seconds in native video is simply too long. However, our findings would seem to contradict the perceived wisdom that mobile users have limited attention spans and are only interested in short video content.

According to our findings, smartphone users are more likely to spend time engaging with long-form video ads compared to 6-second ads when executed correctly. In fact, 72% of mobile users who have watched 6 seconds will continue to watch and engage with video up to 22 seconds. When native video reaches 15 to 22 seconds in length across premium publisher environments, mobile and tablet users that have watched this far are significantly more engaged than desktop users.

The evolution of our ‘mobile minds’

Perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising that people’s attention spans for native video seem to be growing longer. While the findings in our report represent the first of their kind in native video, there have been several studies undertaken around the attention of mobile phone users when it comes to reading. Over time, conclusions have shifted.

One study in 2010 found that reading on a mobile device was impaired when content was presented on a mobile-size screen versus a larger computer screen. But a similar study, undertaken six years later in 2016, showed different results. This study, conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, concluded that there were no practical differences in the comprehension scores of participants, whether they were reading on a mobile device or a computer. In fact, the study found comprehension on mobile was about 3% higher than on a computer for content that was just over 400 words in length, and at an easier level to read.

Why the difference in results? It’s very possible that, over the period between 2010 and 2016 — the exact period during which smartphones became ubiquitous — we’ve all become more accustomed to reading on smaller screens. It’s reasonable to assume that the challenges the average person had reading on a small screen back in 2010 no longer apply now that people have adjusted to life on those smaller screens.

In a similar manner, it would appear that user behavior is changing around video consumption on mobile devices as well.

Well-held assumptions that less-is-more for video length and the broader worries about a crisis in user attention spans very well may prove to have been misplaced.

Creating compelling video content

As attention spans for native video lengthen, marketers would do well to reassess their best practices as it relates to creating content for mobile consumption. In particular, native video creators should think carefully about improving video performance during the key drop-off periods on a specific device.

For videos that will be consumed on mobile or tablet, videos should be edited to pack a punch in the first 6 seconds, in order to draw in users. The latest data suggests that the optimal length for native video content on mobile and tablet should be between 15 and 22 seconds. After 22 seconds, user interest does wane. If videos have to be longer, marketers should ensure that there are more-exciting sequences and enticing calls to action around 22 seconds, in order to maintain viewer interest up to 30 seconds.

If nothing else, these recent findings demonstrate that marketers must remain fluid in their understanding of how users engage with content on their devices. Behaviour is shifting, and yesterday’s best practices won’t necessarily apply tomorrow.

By Dale Lovell

Dale Lovell is co-founder of Adyoulike

Sourced from THE DRUM

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7 Key Steps to Take to Create Conversion-Boosting Content for Native Advertising

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By Gloria Kopp.

Writing content for your business and marketing strategy is no easy business. The mastery comes in when you’re able to find the right balance between promotional and informative content but, of course, this varies business to business, industry to industry.

Once you’ve found your balance, then comes the challenge of actually writing the content that convinces your potential lead to convert into a paying customer. This is especially important when it comes to creating content for your native advertising campaign since the content needs to be personalised and custom-made.

Here to ensure your writing process is effective and actually boosts your conversion rates, these are seven key steps you need to take to make a real impact on your marketing strategy.

Research Your Trending Topics

The first thing you need to do when you sit down to write content for your native advertising campaign is to find topics that your readers want to read about. Typically, these will be trending topics that talk about current events or in other ways, remain relevant to your reader.

Ask yourself questions like ‘what do my readers want to read’ and ‘what topics are they already reading and talking about?’. List up as many topics as you can before narrowing down your selection to what you’re going to write about next. You can find more topics and ideas that are relevant by heading over to Via Writing.

Be sure to include links and citations to trending topics or pages that can help build your SEO ranking while giving your readers access to information they want to read. You can professionally add these citations to your native advertisements using tools like Cite It In.

Summarise the Problem

Marketing a product or service is simply convincing a customer to invest in what you have to offer. However, this won’t happen if the customer isn’t aware of why they should be buying a product in the first place.

This can be easily overcome by spelling out the problem in your native advertising content. Whether you’re selling headphones that block out external sounds for a clearer experience or fruit that will help make your healthier, outline the problem in your content and then state how your product addresses it.

However, it’s worth remembering that native advertising means that you don’t directly link the product itself and it’s more about providing valuable information to your readers. This can be overcome by simply detailing the problem in the content that gets the customer thinking about the problem and what they can do to address it. When talking about solutions to the problem, in this example of headphones, you can talk about the latest technology that has come into play to minimise the risk of this problem happening, such as advanced noise cancelling technology that entices the user to want to look into buying the product.

Using Metaphors in Your Headlines

The headline is potentially one of the most important aspects of your native advertising content as it will be the first thing your reader reads and will entice them to click on your link to find out more.

One of the more effective ways to boost the click-through rates of your headlines is to chuck in metaphor. Not only is this a great way to add some spice to your headlines, but Princeton University also found that metaphors are one of the most persuasive literacy devices around.

There is a tonne of tools out there that can help you with finding appropriate metaphors, much like Grammarix and State of Writing.

There are also many services out there that can help you define and choose a captivating headline for every piece of content you write. Using tools like Essay Roo or Boom Essays, as recommended by the HuffingtonPost, you can test and sample multiple versions of a headline before deciding on the best one for you.

Implement Effective Calls to Action (CTA)

Right at the very end of your native advertising content is the part where you want to make the conversion happen. One of the most effective ways to do this is to use a powerful call to action that basically guides the user on what to do next.

Whether it’s signing up and following your social media pages, joining your mailing list or taking advantage of the 10% discount you’re currently running, always include a call to action to boost your conversion rates.

Tell a Story In line with Your Business Interests

Take a look at the Red Bull business and see what they do when it comes to content. You regularly see people jumping out of planes, doing triple flips on motorbikes, freestyle diving off cliffs and even the nail-biting stunt that was Red Bull Stratos where skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped from 24 miles high in the Stratosphere where he reached speeds of over 843.6mph, causing him to break the sound barrier.

This is native marketing done right. Red Bull is all about ‘getting wings’ and having the energy to do the things you want to do, which is evident in these videos that they are producing. One of the best ways to create compelling native advertising content is to tell a story that matches the interests that your Ecommerce store has. Don’t forget to edit any story you choose using editing tools like Ox Essays.

For example, if you’re a clothing store that sells winter clothes, find an influencer or create a story about someone that works in snowy conditions and the life that they live. If you want ideas from a professional copywriter, you can enlist the help of services like Paper Fellows or Academadvisor.

Tell a Story in Your Content

Hand in hand with the consideration above, the aspect of telling a story is so important that it needs a section of its own. Even if you’ve never written a story before, imagine you are doing so with every single piece of content that you write. Every piece of content has a beginning, a middle and an end and chapters in the middle.

Within the story, you’ll have a main character in which the story follows. This character needs to come across a problem or some level of hardship in which can be conquered by the end of the story. In some cases, this could be as simple as good versus evil or in the case of your eCommerce store, perhaps the character is falling in love or needs helps with something.

The most important thing to remember is that the character needs to be relatable and you need to convey emotion in what you’re saying. If the reader can’t relate to the character and feel how the character is feeling, the story won’t work.

You can use editing tools, like Assignment Help, to create a story and then to go through it to make sure that it makes sense, is relevant to your advert and communicates the message you want it to. If you’re struggling for ideas in the first place, you can always use idea generation tools, such as My Writing Way.

“Follow the above format to make sure that your content, your sentences and your journey through the topic is fluid and doesn’t jump around to confuse the reader. Stay on point, and you’ll be able to keep your readers engaged from start to finish” – explains Ramon Hart, a Content Strategist at Ukwritings.

Ensuring Your Content is Digestible

One of the biggest mistakes that a lot of content writers make is not writing, or formatting, their content into an easily digestible format that makes it easy to read and consume what is being written.

Imagine if this article was in a huge block format without subheadings or paragraph breaks. You’d take one look at the behemoth task and probably tap the ‘back’ button.

Additionally, it’s important to plan and be aware of where your native advertising content is going to be posted. For example, you could be writing a technology piece for your eCommerce store but if you’re writing for a site like The Guardian or an online publication like Mashable, you’re going to be using two different types of style, format and language that you’ll need to be aware of.

Conclusion

As you can see, creating content that can dramatically boost your conversion rates isn’t difficult, it’s simply a case of being smart and making sure that you give your readers the best experience when they are reading your content. Create the best experience, and you’ll see those all-important rates start to climb.

By Gloria Kopp

“Gloria Kopp is a marketing manager at Resumention. She is a review writer at Studydemic blog for students, and is a regular contributor at The Tab and Revieweal blogs”.

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The Rise of Native Programmatic Advertising

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By Ashley Yenick,

This year, native advertising is beginning to grow at a rapid rate against programmatic by 36%. Although non-social native advertising slides in at the biggest segment of digital advertising at 58%, native advertising isn’t far behind. What makes native programmatic advertising such a win for advertisers is that it connects to the consumer in an innovative way (because it’s relevant advertising to them), and also allows for marketers and advertisers to place advertisements that seem intuitive to consumers. So, how can agencies begin to capitalize on native advertising’s growing rate? triplelift suggests that teams need to have a specific goal in mind with converging and focusing on the walled gardens (social native) and the outside of the walled gardens (non-social native) into one cohesive native advertising channel. Here’s what we can learn from triplelift’s findings:

Mobile Has Taken Over

We now live in a world where mobile is more prominent than desktop. It’s become an essential now for brands to have a mobile and desktop site, and when applicable, a mobile app. On average, we spend about 5 hours on mobile (which is a 20% increase compared to Q4 in 2015), where we can receive everything from curated music playlists to ordering rides or food with a tap of your finger. Megan Pagliuca, Chief Data Officer at Hearts & Science states, “In the future, native will be the only ad format on mobile.” By 2021, worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to increase to 1.7 B, which is a difference of 230 M from the 1.47 B in 2016.

Although non-social native advertising slides in at the biggest segment of digital advertising at 58%, native advertising isn’t far behind.

Content is Key

In 2016, Google and Facebook owned 76% of internet advertising growth. To effectively engage with your consumers, non-social, native programmatic advertising is the route to go. Brands that are looking to create more compelling content should plan to spend 44% more on non-social native advertising. Consumers are now more aware of the content brands are creating more than ever, and brands are becoming more careful about what kind of content they publish that could ruin their reputation. In addition to having creative content, the consumer expectations are also higher with the notion that the brand sites they visit (whether it be their site, social channels, etc.) are aesthetically pleasing, diverse, and intuitive.

Online and Digital Advertising Will Surpass TV Ads

The native programmatic strategy not only gives your consumers less “sales-y” advertisements, it shows them advertisements of products and services that consumers are actually interested in, in a natural and respectful (and not forced) way.

It’s safe to say that we’re in a new era of advertising. For 76 years, the TV advertising industry has grown to be one of the biggest platforms marketers use to get their services or products seen by the masses. However, in spite of being younger, online advertising has only taken 24 years to become even bigger than TV advertising. An important note that triplelift points out is that when commercials come on TV, consumers are checking their phones, and not comprehending advertisements that are playing in the background. How does this online advertising era effect ad budgets? Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, predicts in her internet report that internet advertising will surpass TV advertising for the first time in history for $200 B

The native programmatic strategy not only gives your consumers less “sales-y” advertisements, it shows them advertisements of products and services that consumers are actually interested in, in a natural and respectful (and not forced) way. As this strategy grows larger, it will continue to help other brands get their products and services viewed by consumers that are in their target market and demographic, instead of taking the risk and spending extra ad dollars on campaigns that might not be seen by your target market.

To learn more about how to take advantage of native advertising, check out the rest of triplelift’s research here. Advertising Week is proud to have triplelift as one of our partners.

By Ashley Yenick,

Content Coordinator at Advertising Week

Sourced from HUFFPOST

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Advertorial is Misleading but Persuasive

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A new study published in the journal Communication Research shows that specific communication tactics used in advertorials are very persuasive. But why they are more effective than traditional advertisements?

The investigation, which looked specifically at health advertorials, showed that advertorials, or “native advertisements” are actually far more persuasive than even ad agencies thought they were.

Advertorials, or advertisements camouflaged as credible news, succeed in misleading people, in part, by damping down skepticism and expectations for truth in advertising. The study was undertaken at Dartmouth College-Stanford University.

The fact that advertorials are so successful has led to complaints, and then a crackdown. Over in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission last December issued guidelines on native advertising intended to prevent customers from being deceived. The guidelines suggest using a clear label of “advertisement” and placing disclosures in front of or above the headline. So, while the Americans are having a meltdown, the rest of the world is wondering whether their own governments will meddle with advertising rules.

Advertorials are not new. Infomercials and other “blurring practices” between editorials and advertising first appeared as early as the late 1940s in television and print media, and the volume and revenue of blurring practices of advertising are increasing. But until now it was it not clear how advertorials create favourable marketing environments for advertisers, and how readers process advertorials.

The Dartmouth-Stanford study found that advertorials were less likely to trigger consumer awareness of persuasive intent, especially when the “advertisement” label was not present.

“Unlabelled advertorials, compared to labelled advertorials and regular advertisements, were less likely to trigger consumer awareness of persuasive intent, and increased favourable attitudes toward advertising messages and purchase intention,” says lead author Sunny Jung Kim. “Because of their design and structure, advertorials tend to sway readers into believing that they are viewing credible information in the form of an editorial or news source.”

Participants in their experiments exhibited more positive attitudes toward advertorials than they did toward traditional advertisements due to advertorials’ unique structure, which, in turn, increased their willingness to purchase advertised products.

“This form of advertising appears to be on the rise as advertisers try to embed their ads in the stories we read and the photos we see in almost every platform of social media,” said co-author Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford University. “Understanding how these advertorials operate cognitively can improve guidelines for the prevention of misleading or confusing consumers.”

Kim adds: “Until now, there has been no empirical evidence that has tested the core elements of persuasion tactics in advertorials, namely their unique structure and labelling and its impact on information processing. These advertising tactics are pervasive across various forms of media, from newspapers and magazines to social media. Our findings have broad implications for health researchers, advertisers and consumers.”

For those of us that think that advertorial is a perfectly viable way for advertisers to reach their target markets? Rock on, while we can. At least we know it works.

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Why Smart Internet Marketers Are Opting for Native Advertising

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By Toby Nwazor.

Consider that 32 percent of consumers are open to sharing a native ad with friends, family and colleagues, while only 19 percent of consumers will share traditional banner ads.

According to a report on Shopify, global retail ecommerce sales are projected to grow to $3.4 trillion (U.S.) by 2019. This is a huge surge compared to 2015′s figure of $1.548 trillion. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of internet marketers seem to be taking advantage. And many are smart enough to be employing something called native advertising.

Native advertising is any paid content that is made to match the form of the platform it appears on without being disruptive. This may mean promoted tweets on Twitter, suggested posts on Facebook and editorial-based content. It can be presented in the form of a video, an image or an article. And no, it is not the same as content marketing.

How’s that? Content marketing involves finding a way to place the product being promoted within the content provided. In contrast to native advertising, this is relatively obvious.

Native advertising is less obvious. It is not even that focused on product promotion. Instead, it usually comes across as sponsored posts on social media platforms and other sites, as promoted tweets, feature videos on Youtube, suggested reading/viewing and more. Native advertising is designed to blend seamlessly into the style and structure of the content of the page and the website on which it is displayed.

In the words of Vladmir Bashkin, business development director of Adnow, a fast-growing native advertising and content-discovery platform, “Native advertising is the ninja of digital marketing: quiet yet visible, subtle yet effective. And you know that ninjas kick ass; so does native marketing”.

This statement encapsulates the reasons I believe all smart internet marketers should leverage native advertising for their marketing campaigns. Those reasons:

1. It does not disrupt the browsing experience. We have all experienced banner ads or, more annoyingly, popup ads when we browse. Those forms of digital advertisement are intrusive – hence, their relatively low click-through and conversion rates.

Unlike these forms of digital marketing, native advertising feels so natural that there is much less of an abrupt transition from the natural web page content to advertisement. Personally speaking, I don’t find that they disrupt my browsing experience. In fact, I find the links to the suggested content at the end of the article to be complementary and helpful.

2. It promotes brand awareness in a way nothing else can. Have you ever come across shows on network TV sponsored by established brands? Or maybe you saw the article posted by Dell on the New York Times website on January 8, 2014. It didn’t promote Dell’s products directly. It just presented beautiful and informative content – by Dell. These are examples of sponsored and branded content, respectively.

Efforts to build brand awareness can also occur in the form of a single sponsored magazine issue, in the way that Target bought all the ad space on the August 22, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.

Then there is  the method of strategic product placement. Ever watched American Idol? If you have, you have surely noticed the Coca-Cola cups held by the judges on the show.

There are many more methods of native advertising, but this is one way to make your brand go viral, in a positive way.

3. It can bypass security measures meant to keep ads at bay. Native advertising does this for one major reason; at face value, it is not an ad. You do not need an ad space on a website to put up native advertisements. Native ads, instead, comply with the editorial structure and standards of the publisher (online or offline) on whose site they are placed. They are part of the content on site pages on which they appear, so they do not appear as ads; they appear as content.

In addition, anyone can install ad-locking software on their computer, tablet or mobile phone, which will deal comfortably with banner and pop-up ads. But native ads will always slip through. That means that native advertising has a higher potential to reach a much greater number of people.

5. Statistics favor native advertising. Business Insider reports that native ads budget hit a height of $4.7 billion in 2013 and are projected to climb to $21 billion in 2018 as more online marketers discover its benefits. It was reported to perform much better than traditional display, especially on mobile where it has more than 1 percent of CTR.

According to emarketer, native advertising is already offered by 73 percent of online publishers, with another 17 percent planning to take the same path. In addition, 32 percent of consumers are open to sharing a native ad with friends, family and colleagues while only 19 percent of consumers will share traditional banner ads. Note that these are stats from as far back as 2015.

That’s why, in 2017, it’s evident that the world is moving the way of native ads, and you should too if you want an optimal yield from your marketing strategies.

By Toby Nwazor

Toby Nwazor is an consumer-goods entrepreneur and freelance writer. Get in touch with him for ghost writing, website content creation and other professional writing services.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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