Exploring the Benefits of Native Advertising (Pros + Cons)
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Pathlabs Marketing |
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August 8th, 2023 |
Native advertising has become a popular choice for many digital marketers and media professionals. However, there's still a lack of understanding about its intricacies and benefits.
In this blog post, we will provide a brief overview of native advertising and highlight some of its key aspects.
What Is Native Advertising?
Native advertising involves paid advertisements designed to mimic the visual style and tone of the platform it appears on.
“Native advertising is a form of paid ad that closely resembles the look and feel of the online platform it serves on. Native ads are kind of like a chameleon; they match the appearance of their surroundings, trying to seem as if they are ‘native’ to the page.”
The Benefits of Native Advertising
To understand native ads a little bit more, let’s discuss their benefits:
Multiple Ad Formats and Content
A core benefit of native is that there are multiple ways in which marketers can deploy these types of ads; these include:
Sponsored articles or advertorials
Shopping ads
Search feed result ads
Promoted social media posts
Recommended content
In-feed ads on websites or apps
Branded content on streaming platforms
The specific content native ads include and link to are often different from other ad types that solely feature a call to action (CTA) and a link to a landing page.
Instead, native ads try to promote utility for users or engage them more. The ad may be a search or shopping result relevant to the user’s query, a suggestion on a recommendation list, or it may link to a piece of high-quality content. This overall helps make the ad seem more natural in its host environment.
Non-Intrusive Advertising
“Native advertising provides an enhanced user experience because the nature of the ad itself is not disruptive. Users can quickly get frustrated with persistent display or push ads that continually stick out against the content they consume, but native ads blend with the content. Thus, improving the user experience by making it less intrusive.”
Seamless Integration
The process of making native ads blend in is relatively straightforward: the marketer provides their native ad content to a publisher or platform, which then places it, adjusting the style to match the surrounding content. While a label like "ad" or "sponsored" may still be present, the overall format makes it appear as if it was organically meant to be there.
Improved Engagement
“Improved engagement is a benefit of native advertising because the ads are typically less distracting and more useful or interesting to the user. This increased interest makes a user more likely to “engage” with the ad, which leads to more clicks and higher click-through rates.”
Precision Targeting
Marketers commonly use programmatic tactics or online platforms to deploy their native advertisements. They input their campaign goals, target audience, budget, and advanced targeting preferences. Then, the technology will target contexts or users that pertain to the native ad content.
This can contribute to a higher ROI because the money spent on native targets the right users more apt to lean in.
Building Trust and Loyalty
Native ads avoid using sales language, include an indication they are an ad, and can offer content and media to provide value to users. These are positive steps toward making users trust the brand more.
The Pros of Native Ads vs Traditional Display Ads
Native ads differ from traditional display ads in their approach to engaging users.
Traditional display ads typically manifest as banners or boxes positioned in side margins, headers, footers, or interspersed within page content. Commonly accompanied by a CTA, they aim to capture user attention and often incite ad clicks, leading to ultimate conversion.
Native ads, as mentioned, take a different route. They integrate and don’t immediately strive to seize user attention or prompt instant conversion. Instead, they try to foster natural interaction with the user, offering a suggested product, video, article, or content piece crafted to be genuinely informative or, at the very least, more captivating.
While this blog predominantly highlights the benefits of native advertising, it's worth noting that traditional display ads are still useful. Even at Pathlabs, we run such campaigns. However, depending on the campaign's goal, native advertising can offer a gentler way to engage users.
The Cons of Native Advertising
High Price of Native
“Native advertising is not perfect and has its drawbacks; one that stands out is these types of ads can be more expensive than other methods. Especially at Pathlabs, we typically end up paying higher platform fees to access inventory.”
Measuring Performance
Measuring native ad performance is complicated as users often engage with the ad, drop off, and convert later. It's challenging to gauge the ad's impact on user actions without effective tracking from initial engagement to conversion.
Requires Knowledge and Time
As with any other ad method, marketers won’t meet their campaign objectives on the first try, not even the second, third, or fourth. Running native ad campaigns takes time and different iterations to figure out the best placement and targeting tactics, budget, and ad content to use. When going about this process, it is essential to have an optimization mindset throughout.
Native Ads Can Seem Deceptive
Even when marketers excel at seamlessly integrating native ads into relevant spaces, users may still note they are advertisements and perceive them as no different from other ad methods. Making them continue to not engage.
How We Make Native Advertising Work for You
At Pathlabs, we act as a Media Execution Partner for agencies. We've successfully executed numerous native advertising campaigns for our partner agencies, utilizing our skilled teams, streamlined workflows, and advanced technologies. This allows agency leaders to focus on their core business operations and company growth while we handle the campaign execution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, native advertising offers a seamless and user-centric approach to engaging audiences. Its benefits, from diverse ad formats to enhanced user experiences, demonstrate its effectiveness. While native advertising holds substantial advantages, including trust-building and improved engagement, there are considerations to consider, such as potential measurement and user perception challenges. As a versatile marketing tool, native advertising, when executed strategically, can pave the way for successful campaigns and meaningful connections with users.
