Native ads are the hottest frontier in online marketing today. These ads are unique to a particular site or platform, and are meant to blend inconspicuously into the site’s design. The result is that the content-driven ad looks more like part of the site than an advertisement, creating an experience for a consumer that is seamless, clean and unobtrusive. Classic examples include Google AdWords and YouTube's TrueView Video Ads. However, native advertising isn’t new, or limited to online – infomercials and live read ads on radio by a DJ or news anchor are also great examples of native formats. The most recent surge of native advertising is brought to you by social media. With the rise of social networks and the focus of online marketing shifting to engagement and interactivity, brands are anxious to be part of the content with native placements like Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Facebook’s Page Post Ads.
This can present a bit of a double-edge sword: while native ads reportedly deliver higher engagement rates than many other types of ads, consumers may view them as deceptive since they look so much like publisher content. A recent study by MediaBrix showed that many consumers find sponsored video that... Read more
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Best Practices in Native Advertising
Tags: native advertising
Posted in Ad Serving, Social Media, Targeting | No Comments »
Is Native Advertising the Cure for Banner Blindness?
Alongside “social,” “mobile” and “RTB,” “native advertising” is probably one of the hottest buzzwords today. Native is viewed as a cure for a lot of what ails the online advertising industry. Ads that are unique to a particular site or platform by definition also tend to match the look, feel and voice of the site that hosts them. Native ads tend to be content-based, and, because they blend so neatly into the content that surrounds them, are likely to perform very well. It seems that native can address a lot of the issues facing our industry today – but is it a perfect solution?
I’ve spoken and written a great deal recently about the problem of Banner Blindness, which impacts advertisers and publishers alike. According to our own survey results, only 14% of consumers surveyed found ads served to them as relevant. Half of the respondents never click on any ads, and 35% click on less than 5 ads a month. By the numbers, Banner Blindness adds up to fewer leads for advertisers and lower revenue for site owners.
A large part of the problem can be attributed to predictable placement. Display ads typically run as a leaderboard across the top of... Read more
Tags: banner blindness, display advertising, native advertising
Posted in Ad Networks, Ad Serving, Creative Best Practices | No Comments »
Digital Publishing: Don’t Call It a Comeback Just Yet; Display is Broken
Yes, I’m an Internet Old-timer, but surely I’m not the only one who remembers seeing the first banner ad for AT&T on Hotwired.com back in October 1994. Display advertising is 18 years old. As the digital ad industry enters adulthood, it appears as though we’re training a whole new generation to ignore the very ads designed to keep our Internet free - a phenomenon called “banner blindness.” Despite comeback reports to the contrary and rosy analyst projections, I believe display advertising is fundamentally broken.
The way I see it, there are three big problems with display and three ways publishers can address them. After laying it all out, I’ll call out a publisher who is blazing a trail in best practices for addressing all of this.
Problem1: Expect Irrelevance. Good display ads are being crushed under the weight of tonnage. Take a look at premium publishing sites, or even some of the better special interest digital publishers, and you will see a lot of ads -- too many ads. Some are relevant to the reader. Most are not. And the most relevant ads are capped out after the first few impressions of the day. After that, a steady stream of online universities,... Read more
Tags: display advertising, native advertising, publishers, Targeting
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Consumers are Focused on Content. Are you?
So how can you make sure your ads will be seen? Get ads into the content stream. It’s where you and every other consumer on earth spend the bulk of their time: watching, listening and reading content.
Tags: ad, brand, Buzzfeed, content, digital, huffington post, ikea, Jeep, Jonathan Gardner, marketing, media, native advertising, Vibrant Media, Viewability
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