Native advertising has been a hot topic for quite sometime within the mobile marketing and advertising sphere. It has been around on the desktop advertising for a while, but recently a number of marketers believe that it’s the future of the mobile advertising industry. Native Advertising sees its click-through rates (CTR) increasing radically. However, one can argue that native ads can be neglected as users can simply skip them without even recalling coming across them.
But first thing’s first. Lets back up a bit and have a closer look on what is native advertising and why everyone is buzzing about it.
If you are looking for the Wikipedia definition then “Native advertising is a web advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user’s experience. Native ad formats match both the form and the function of the user experience in which it is placed”. In other words, a native Ad does not interfere with the content of the web site or app a user browses.
Is that it? How is it different than display advertising or our long-loved rich media Ad units with the great Click Through rates (CTR) of even up to 2%? Well, let me put it this way. It is a less intrusive way for a brand to display and promote its product to their target audience. Additionally, based on a research by Sharethrough and IPG Media Labs, mobile users looked at native Ads 52% more frequently than display ads. To top that, when it comes to Return on Investment (ROI) native Ads measure 18% higher towards purchase intention than display ads.
For a native Ad to be effective it really needs to feel native, wrapped around in the environment hosted. Ads need to feel native by firstly studying the publisher’s environment and how users interact with it. If marketers manage to get a native Ad right, their audience is 32% more likely to share the Ad with their network compared to 19% on display Ads. Native Ads take the shape of the publisher’s interface and eventually generate higher click through rates as they are less intrusive, more targeted and user friendly than regular display or rich media Ad units.
Still wondering whether native advertising works? Mobile display Ads Cost per Message (CPM) is as low as $0.75 compared to other media and mostly online ($3.50). Native advertising can change that for mobile. Native has transferred from online to mobile through the biggest players of the market like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn and recently Instagram.
Ways to go native and some great examples on mobile:
The above are great examples of native Ads in newsfeeds on social apps. However, native advertising can take many forms. We have yet to see examples on entertainment apps and mobile sites, as well as on productivity and mobile app games which I believe to be the most interesting and, if executed correctly, the most rewarding of all.
The future of native mobile advertising will flourish in the next couple of years. As marketers we will be presented with higher demands of mobile native Ad content development, coupled with the, also trendy, programmatic buying.
Is it here to stay? Absolutely! More and more content consumption takes place on the go and users look to those mediums that provide with as less intrusive content as possible. Native advertising on mobile is able to make all three parties of the mobile advertising life cycle happy; (1) the advertiser, who can now reach more targeted consumers based on their interests, location, content and publisher; (2) the publisher, who can now sell its inventory to advertisers without sacrificing its mobile destination’s look and feel for irrelevant Ad placements, and finally; (3) the end user who is no longer destructed from intrusive mobile media placements while on the go.