What is native advertising?
If you’re following advertising industry news, “native advertising” seems to be the latest buzzword. As is usually the case with new technologies and their implementations, the term is thrown around loosely. While the “native ad” is fairly easy to define, the term ‘native advertising’ is a lot more broad.
Below is an overview of the many forms of native advertising seen today, some work better than others, depending on the platform, the content, and how well they integrate with the user/viewer native experience.
We’ve narrowed down a few methods of native advertising examples with emphasis on the most common forms of native ads seen across the web today.
In-feed Native Ads
Simply put, “in-feed” native ads exactly what they sound like, native advertising units that are created to match the website’s look, feel, and format of the site that in which they appear on. These native ads are probably the most commonly seen native ad units. From a publisher’s perspective, In-feed native ads allows the monetization of sections of their website where they previously couldn’t, while advertisers and marketers can regain premium advertising placements with greater value.
Advertorials, Branded Content
With origins in the print publishing industry, Advertorials are the most complex form of native advertising. Rather than having a simple native ad with minimal to no actual “branded” content like other forms of native advertising, advertorials pack content marketers and brands are looking to get across their audience. Advertorials are most effective when they uphold high quality writing standards, and when the advertiser is well aware of the publisher’s audience, their psychographics and demographics.
Advertorials – “Sponsored” Content
The other side of advertorial content is similar to branded content, but it’s much more about real promotion of the brand itself. Rather than a written piece that mimics original articles on a site or is directly relevant to the type of stories that are common to the publisher’s site, sponsored content is more promotional material written to specifically convey the brand marketer’s message.
Content Recommendation Widgets
These are one of the most used forms of native advertising examples you’ll see on the web today.
Sponsored Social Media Posts
These native advertising examples allow brands to utilize their social media to reach their audience directly. They use the form of in-feed units to promote their brands and usually it’s always accomplished by targeting their users behaviourally.
