The buzz of ‘native advertising’ is thriving! The term is employed ubiquitously by publishers and brands as advertising transitions from the standard formats that have been the mainstay of digital advertising into a new era of subtler communication, engaging consumers through content, with informative and entertaining communication, as opposed to a direct sales message.
This manifestation of commercial messaging calls for deeper consumer understanding, deeper awareness of brand positioning, and media brand attributes, along with a clearer recognition of both the timing of delivery and the method – the positioning and the platform.
The formula for success isn’t straightforward; there are a number of key component elements that require real understanding and planning beyond that for a standard ad campaign. But done well, the rewards are worth the investment. Attribution is always a thorny subject, and in terms of measurement of efficacy, native poses many challenges. It has been mooted that ‘awareness’ and ‘engagement’ are more valuable and appropriate measures if however sometimes intangible.
Clare O’Brien, senior industry programmes manager at IAB states: “The convergence of content-based advertising and ‘native’ is probably how digital advertising should have always worked, had seriously great advertising brains been at the helm of the industry all those years ago when the first banners emerged onto web pages that would make even the most amateur web designer in 2016 blush to their roots.”
“But this is a tech-led medium that’s commercially only twenty years old and the brain power has necessarily been focused on building rather than understanding the environment. Far from traditional media, digital audiences are fragmented in inconceivable ways across multiple media owners’ sites and are doing far more than passively reading, watching or listening to brand messaging. They are accessing stuff that is directly relevant to them. Stuff that’s irrelevant (or annoying) is ignored at best, blocked at worst – to the detriment of the entire ecosystem.”
“This world of free access to content can only be supported by advertising and now that advertisers are spending 42% of their ad budgets on digital (IAB / PwC AdSpend: 2014), the creative brains have arrived to make the kind of content that people not only like but respond to emotionally; digital media influences what people care about as well as buy.”
“Combining great content with the context made possible by understanding fragmented audiences – that’s native advertising. It’s digital display getting great at what advertisers need it to do.”
The emerging Keywords for Native (success)
I’m going to suggest that the positive development of native advertising has at its core a set of key words – ‘relevance’, ‘audience understanding’, ‘reward’, ‘value’, ‘engaging’ and one more from Jesper Laursen, CEO of The Native Advertising Institute, ‘multichannel’, who adds, "Brands will experience much bigger effect if the native programmes run across multiple types of channels. It can be all the channels that a specific publisher offers, it can be across different social media and even a brand’s own platforms."
Like any form of advertising, the ultimate goal is about promoting a product or service and driving sales. In engaging readers through content, there has to be something of value for the reader at that point of interaction. The best native ads have to be compelling, to enable cut through to an advertising weary audience, they need to be factually accurate and clearly labelled. They build on the relationship of the consumer with the media brand environment that they are present in, trust and feel comfortable with.
As an example, The Atlantic has been using an “audience first” approach to identify brand propositions and the value of sponsored content. They state, “Everything we do is audience-first. With that in mind, we are able to create compelling content that captures readers’ attention and automatically has an impact for brands.”
Transparency and delivery
Everyone recognises traditional advertising when they see it. When that message is delivered through content, though, we encounter some thorny issues. How should the native advertising piece be labelled? At one extreme, the most negative aspect is not to label it and pass it off as editorial in the vain belief that consumers will see it as another piece of (unbiased) content from the media brand. But in whose interest is that? The purpose of a native piece is to draw the consumer into engagement with the advertising brand and recognise its involvement in the subject, its credibility and build a rapport with the reader. Clearly, not labelling is not acceptable and has led to clashes with the advertising authorities.
Not only that, but consumers are intelligent – they will see through it and if left with a feeling of deception, the negative impact on both media brand and advertising brand will be long lasting, potentially fatal. If we see native advertising in the context of content marketing, then it is about delivering something of value to the consumer with the understanding that the consumer knows they are receiving a form of advertising.
Jesper Laursen of The Native Advertising Institute suggests, "Publishers and marketers around the globe are right now feeling the ad blocker punishment from audiences furious about the poor quality and extremely intrusive nature of digital advertising as we've known it for the past five-ten years. If we make the mistake of trying to trick the audience by not labelling native advertising clearly, they will end up punishing us even harder. Having said that, practically all publishers and brands we talk to are very aware that they need to protect their integrity and trustworthiness. And, finally, it is important to remember that it is seldom in the best interest of the brands to be hidden."
In the US in December, the FTC released an enforcement policy statement and a business guide for native advertising, providing more detail on how it should be delivered. Many players in the digital advertising space, though, are concerned over a possible infringement on innovation and the IAB has been critical of applying too prescriptive an approach.
The FTC guidelines are quite vague and there’s much more emphasis placed on the publisher’s responsibility in identifying and disclosing native ad content.
So the challenge going forward for regulatory bodies as well as advertisers and publishers is to develop guidelines without impacting innovation in the market.
Studies have shown that clear labelling is a positive virtue; it reinforces the relationship with the reader, clarifies what they are reading rather than confuses through being vague and actually produces better results – a study by the advertising technology company Polar, showed that when brands included a logo on their native advertising articles, they received a 15% increase in click through rates. Earlier this year, The Guardian began labelling their native articles as “paid content” or “paid for by” to make it clearer for readers.
Distribution
Native advertising is not cheap to produce and getting enough reach for native ads to justify the high production cost is a challenge, so publishers need to look at how they can extend amplification of the message. One emerging route is via Facebook Instant Articles, which publishers have been quick to adopt. Up until now, however, it has been hard to monetise, especially with native advertising, but at least one ad tech company, Polar, is extending support for its platform to Instant Articles, giving publishers greater ability to run native ads there.
Jesper Laursen comments, "The update to Facebook's Branded Content Policy is very exciting news for publishers and brands alike. Many publishers have been contemplating trying to bypass Facebook but now they can do it in the open and that is a huge advantage. There is always the discussion about publishers putting too many eggs in Facebook's basket but if you jump into Instant Articles, this is a great opportunity to monetise. And to brands, it is a great way to extend the partnership with a publisher and leverage the enormous audience of Facebook."
Creativity
Expect to see more use of visual content in native campaigns as video becomes widely adopted and advertiser funded programming increases on webtv channels.
Time Out is pushing creativity by using drone-shot video as part of a native ad campaign for Nescafé. The video is distributed organically on Facebook, YouTube, on Nescafé’s digital hub, and as custom ad units on Time Out’s site. Last year, native supplied one-third of all digital ad revenue at Time Out, and it expects that figure to rise to 50 percent this year.
As native advertising becomes a bigger component of publishers’ revenues (this year, The Atlantic estimates it will account for 75% of ad revenue), the breadth of native ad possibilities is widening. The Atlantic cites a spectrum of opportunities from video to infographics to text-based editorial pieces. As an example, last year, its readers spent nearly seven minutes on its two best-performing advertorials: Qualcomm’s ‘The Space Within’ and Boeing’s ‘A Century in the Sky’, compared to the average time spent of four to five minutes for its sponsored content.
Other publishers are introducing native innovation and this month, Auto Trader is introducing native ads. The native ads, which will appear among the classifieds (where users are likely to be already interested in a brand), will be offered initially to car manufacturers, rather than Auto Trader’s core audience of second-hand car dealerships. No-one has done native to this level in the classified environment. During beta-testing, the native ads have been up to twelve times more responsive than standard listings.
FT Squared’s Paid Post format sits in a prime position on the FT homepage. On click through, readers are taken to separate pages that contain client-voiced articles, videos and images, chosen by the brand. With the latest update, these brand pages will be using the full width of the screen, on all devices, and include more multimedia features, like animated graphs and infinite scrolling. The publisher uses reader insight to inform content and adjust campaigns in real time.
Finally
Various reports show that the rate of growth predicted for native advertising is very healthy, and certainly ahead of most, if not all other ad formats. Whether it is actually doubling or quadrupling in the next two to five years, the real fact is that it is growing apace, and any brand or publisher that is not on the bandwagon now ought to make it a priority as soon as possible.
