Even if you don’t know what it is just yet “Native Advertising” is right in your face every day. In fact, if you don’t quite understand how it differs from a big billboard ad, or “plug” given on a radio or television program, that means much of the native advertising you’re being exposed to is doing its job!
Below you’ll find a quick description of what native advertising is and how you can put it into practise.
People are sick of and immune to traditional ads from the pre-2000 era
How many of you are turned off when your favorite radio announcer says “Now a word from our sponsor”? Or are downright sick and tired of watching an hour of television, only to later come to the realization that you actually just gave close to, or slightly more than 20 minutes of your life to sit and watch commercials for Snuggle Fabric Softener, and Dawn “Just one pump and the dishes are done” dish soap?
Even though you don’t do your own laundry, and the dishwashing machine takes care of your dirty forks, plates, cups and spoons!
Online, things are not better. People are smart enough to ignore a website’s banner ads. Their ad blindness is severe. So – for God’s sake – don’t put your banner ad on top of your right sidebar anymore. It’s no longer effective (unless you deem a banner ad with 0.33% click-through-rate as effective.)
People want more control over ads
That’s why we spend all our time online now, right? If we don’t like that pop up which promises to increase the size of our manhood in 10 days (or your money back) – then we simply close it and continue on with our browsing.
Of course, you ladies get your fare share of blatantly targeted ads too – from promises of a sexual reawakening to the inconsiderate ads with some overweight housewife turned supermodel overnight.
That’s why pop up and pop under are much-hated; that’s why Google penalizes sites displaying too many ads above the fold; that’s why people install ad blocker on their browser.
The frustration one feels when they know they’re being advertised to is the reason that native advertising was born.
How does it work…
I’ll spare you all the complicated marketing-industry “hubb bubb” and make this explanation as simple to understand as humanly possible. Native advertising is paid advertising, using content that offers the viewer a story or important and useful information, with advertisements cleverly inserted within the story – or contextually placed alongside the content.
One characteristic of native ads: They look like any other content found in a website.
In online magazines, we sometimes see those “sponsored content” section; we also see those “related content” section; some native ads are even very subtle, you can’t tell the difference whether they are actually ads or not.
You might be saying to yourself: “This sounds a heck of a lot like content marketing.” It is in many ways, however the premise of native advertising is that you’re going to sell by not selling. Telling a story about a cool product and recommending it based on a real life circumstance, talking about how disgusting acne is, how repulsive it is and how life will never be good for the reader til they get rid of it.
While content marketing is an all-encompassing term, which any one of us in the business and marketing world have heard of, the native part has only been in use for a few years now. Advertisers craft a clever piece of content (in written, video, or audio form) that doesn’t appear to be an ad at all.
In fact, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a mommy-blogger post extolling the virtues of some “super duper fantastico daily face cream” that removed her wrinkles in less than 7 days, and a native ad that was created and sponsored by the makers of that same product – essentially telling an innocent-sounding “real” story from someone who used that product with success. The goal of a native advertising piece is to make the reader/viewer believe that they’re reading or watching something that’s 100% real (we all know most ads are not 100% real!) That they’re not being sold to, but being told a story or given advice – which inevitably touches their buying nerve and encourages a sale.
Real is what sells products right? You believe that the claims of an advertiser are real, that the product or service does what the content promises it will. For any of you who bought or sold Acai berries back in the 2007-2009 timeframe, you probably understand more about native advertising than most, as all the hype-filled stories that were so prevalent back then were essentially native marketing (at its worst). The deceptive nature of many of these ads led to more lawsuits on behalf of the FTC and victims than can be realistically counted (also learn about Xarelto lawsuits, the case of another false initial message).
Use your morality meter folks! And make sure you understand federal and state laws too!
Why native advertising should be in your playbook
Simply put, native advertising is on demand right now. The following infographic can speak a thousand words – well, sort of; but it is very useful, indeed:
How to implement native advertising in your business
Here are just a few places where you can distribute native content to help sell your products or services. The list includes the most popular, but you might find that your specific type of business requires more of a “niche” platform that’s specific to your industry, in order to best reach your potential customers.
- Google Adwords (i.e., Google Search)
- MSN.com
- Yahoo.com
- Forbes.com
- Youtube
- Tumbler
- Buzzfeed
- Hexagram
- Most major online news sites
Any site with a large amount of traffic, preferably targeted, does now or will in the near future have the ability to add your native content for a price.
If you’re thinking that Google Adwords doesn’t fit the definition that’s been provided for native advertising, that’s because they’re somewhat of an anomaly in this context. They’re serving customers relevant content from the entire web, and placing their ads contextually in front of customers who’ve inputted a search term, even though they didn’t create, edit, or publish that content. Their ads are considered native because they’re surrounding links to the informative content.
Even though Google’s ads are blatant, you aren’t forced to click them to get the content. The lines are a bit blurred with this one, but they get a pass for being the largest search engine on the planet. For instance, you could punch “how to cure cancer naturally” into the search engine and the paid advertising from Google will serve up ads for products and services that are presented above and to the side of the content links.
Forbes has a massive team of writers and marketing professionals that help to create native advertising content for their advertisers. You’re allowed to submit your own material without having their team prepare it (at a significant cost of course), but you’ll still be subject to the editing and approval process: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2013/09/23/inside-forbes-the-role-of-native-advertising-in-our-search-for-a-new-media-equation/.
The numbers don’t lie: Straight up ads are still far more successful; see the following articles for more info on native advertising’s projected future:
- http://insights.wired.com/don-t-fall-for-the-native-ad-hype
- http://mashable.com/2013/09/25/native-advertising
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2013/11/05/inside-forbes-what-i-saw-and-heard-on-the-front-lines-of-native-advertising/
Before you go…
…check out this native advertising keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk – in his very own style (love it!)
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