A native advertising campaign is considered successful if it aligns with the content, audience, tone, and format of the publisher while giving value to the reader.
Quick Answer – An effective native advertising campaign is one that fits in seamlessly with the publisher’s content while at the same time being identified as an advertisement.
The most effective native advertising is the kind that does not come off as an intrusion on the platform. The key features of a well-performing campaign should be that it complements the publisher’s content in terms of tone and form while maintaining its nature as a paid advertisement.
Creating native ads that perform well on all platforms by merely replicating the ad creative on all platforms is ineffective due to differences in context and behavior on each of the websites. Several things can determine how well a campaign performs, including the context and positioning of the ads and even the creative itself.
Ad buyers working with native ad inventory follow one of two philosophies in the pursuit of fit: first, they analyze audience segment data and see whose needs they want to address and then find the right content; or the other way around. As it turns out, the right approach is the latter: what I’m doing while I’m consuming a given page is more relevant than who I am.
Targeted behavioral segments are “who am I,” while contextual information on the page is “what am I reading.” As far as native advertising is concerned, the second is more important than the first, although it’s not mutually exclusive, as a segment might be better served by appearing across several different pieces of content that speak to its needs (while an individual user might benefit from finding the same offer in the same place across similar articles). However, one cannot deny that a well-targeted but noncontextual native ad will simply underperform when placed in an irrelevant placement.
This is the area where many ad ops teams fail, with some of the most egregious sins on record being instances of the same native “ad tile” being used across unrelated platforms and articles. While there is some utility in defining a consistent “look and feel” for native, that is limited to the ad unit itself, not the language used within it.
An in-feed native ad on news content should look and feel like a news headline (short and pithy, without exclamation marks or click-driving language), while a recommended content module at the bottom of an article has more leeway in how it may present its suggestions (again, assuming other similar modules use the same language across the platform). On the opposite end of the spectrum, a placement on a b2b news website may be better served by using more professional and less salesy language in its sponsored stories block, even when the ad itself is in the same “sponsored” box as its counterpart on a more consumer-oriented publication. If you’re trying to appear native to the publication, the same approach should be used for the language as for the formatting. If your creative team thinks about “brand voice” in the same context as headline size, they might want to revisit their assumptions
This is also where your tech stack plays a determining role in how you can approach your advertising. Going with a native ad network that can adapt your asset according to the specific requirements of each publisher opens up this conversation.
As far as voice goes, even when native advertisers try to maintain a consistent visual identity for their ad copy across multiple platforms, it would make sense to do the same with the voice. If the same offer is being made across different verticals at different website domains, there should be subtle changes in approach in each version in order to match the audience’s expectations.
For instance, your financial services offer should sound more professional in a business news publication than in a personal finance blog aimed at young professionals. The difference between the two might be in the language used: “Compare the best fixed interest rates before the end of the year” vs “Here’s what nobody tells you about fixed interest rates,” with the message being the same across variations.
Trying to use the same voice across all platforms will only result in either a jarring disconnect in tone (which your readers will catch on to) or an inattentive review of the publications’ voices (which most of your advertisers will not conduct). To solve it, take a few sample articles from the publication you’re looking to advertise in, scan them for the voice used in said articles, and create 2-3 variations of the same message, each in a slightly different tone of voice.
Sidebars and rails are dying formats, and the rise of native advertising is a direct response to this shift. Placing a native ad after the second or third paragraph in an article, or in between cards in a content feed, will see it engaged with by the user much more frequently than a static sidebar, simply because it sits in the user’s natural reading path.
It is also backed by display metrics since, when placed in the context of your feed, your native ad has a significantly higher viewability rate than its rail-based counterpart. In practice, this means that the next time you have to choose between a cheaper sidebar ad and a more expensive “in-feed” placement, you should probably go for the latter, as the viewability will serve as a gatekeeper to success.
There’s research to back up the viewability statements as well. One of the most oft-cited reports on native advertising, conducted by Media Lab and Sharethrough, reports that native ads are seen 53% more than standard display, and drive 82% better brand lift than their counterparts.
This is an extension of point #4: the promise made in the native ad must continue to be delivered upon once the reader arrives at the landing page, and the easiest way to ensure this is to continue to follow the conventions of the publication the ad appeared in. If your native ad in a productivity article promised to help the reader manage their time better, the landing page should not surprise the reader by taking them to a standard homepage with a hero unit banner and 5 navigation options. If the reader clicked through on the strength of the contextual promise made, they expect to see similar copy on the landing page, at least until they can be convinced to do something else.
It works the other way round too: if the native ad that promotes your brand appeared in an industry publication, it might make sense to make the landing page copy industry-specific and not to make the same offer to everyone from all industries. It’s not necessary to create a separate landing page for every publication you advertise on, but using dynamic creative principles to adjust headlines and images for different content categories will help carry the contextual promise through to conversion.
Native advertising derives its value from appearing as a genuine part of the advertising inventory in which it appears, but this is meaningless if the disclosure is not clear enough for the target reader to parse. Does making disclosure prominent kill your chances at conversions? It doesn’t have to, as evidenced by research showing that 54% of users felt deceived by a native ad that included a prominent disclosure, while 61% felt no deception from a native ad that used a straightforward disclosure. However, this does not reflect well on the advertiser, with 86% of deceived users cutting ad spend with the publisher in favor of another offering. It is much more profitable to use honest disclosure than to hide the fact that your ad is an ad.
The ability to adapt an advertising message to fit the context in which it appears is a major asset, but in practice, it has to be applied throughout a campaign as frequent iterations, rather than as a one-time change at the beginning of a campaign. If you create a single creative, blast it across dozens of standard native advertising placements, and hope for the best, you’re largely wasting your money on a format known to thrive on contextual relevance and audience engagement. On the other hand, designing dozens of variations for dozens of irrelevant ad formats is even less efficient.
On the other hand, even if you’ve adapted your creatives correctly to appear across the best-suited advertising units, used proper language for the intended audience, bid high enough to win impressions in these placements, frequency-capped the whole thing in the hopes of not wasting your money on unengaged users, and invested enough to analyze the performance, you’re likely to find that a few of your worst-performing creatives are dragging the overall performance down despite a few of your best.
This is the price that one has to pay for such a flexible and multi-faceted form of advertisement, and you have to account for human psychology to ensure that your fifteen-segment “mortgage rate guide” doesn’t seem suspiciously like the sort of advertorial the website itself would publish.
As mentioned earlier, CTR for well-placed native ads may actually be lower than for an ill-placed display ad, while also driving overall better brand metrics for the same advertising spend. If you have properly placed your native ads in relevant content placements but still see no improvement in conversion rate due to low engagement, you might need to rethink your strategy.
If you measure performance incorrectly, your campaigns will underperform unnecessarily. If you measure performance incorrectly as a determining factor for budget allocation and optimization, you’re likely to be allocating significantly more resources to an inferior advertising option. A minor cost to absorb for the long-term gains of an improved native campaign lifecycle.
A native advertising campaign is considered successful if it aligns with the content, audience, tone, and format of the publisher while giving value to the reader.
Native ads should correspond with the design of the website or magazine where they are presented.
Contextual relevance plays an important role in native advertising because it ensures that the advertisement is placed in line with the interests of the reader.
Yes, because changing the tone, language, and message depending on the publication can help the ad appear more relevant to the publication’s audience.
