How To Win At Native Advertising

How to get to grips with the newest big thing in marketing…
Native advertising is a red hot poker of a concept in marketing at the moment. And according to digital market research company eMarketer, it’s only going to get hotter – with an estimated £5 billion pounds expected to be spent on it a year by 2017. But what exactly is it? And how can you get it right yourself?
What Is Native Advertising?
The Internet Advertising Bureau describes native advertising as ‘an aspiration as well as a suite of products.’ In this case, the aspiration is to create an advert that doesn’t look like an advert.The reason for this is that the general public is getting weary of being bombarded by advertisements and, increasingly, they’ll go out of their way to avoid them. In 2013, a stat was revealed that the average person has more chance of being in a plane crash that clicking on a banner ad. The suite of products, meanwhile, includes things like in-feed marketing, paid-for search units, recommendation widgets and promoted listings.
What’s So Good About It?
A recent study by Give It A Nudge, discovered that brand recall is much higher from native advertising than from online video or TV ads. In fact, they found that 88 percent of people who saw the native ad and identified it as sponsored content were able to remember the brand that the ad represented later on. This was in comparison to 50 percent of people who watched a television advertisement.
Who’s Doing it Well
Golf
The ‘Way Too Helpful Neighbour’ ad by VW was placed on the Funny or Die website. This reason this ad works is because it’s primarily entertaining. People want to watch an share it because it makes them laugh. The car is simply a prop in the storyline. However, it’ll be remembered once the viewer has finished watching.

Mini
Mini posted their ‘25 places that don’t look normal but are actually real’ article on buzzfeed with a disclaimer that the ad was sponsored by them. This article inspires both emotion and disbelief in readers. It might seem like odd content for Mini to be publishing, but it tied into their ‘roadtrip’ campaign. It received 1.3 million social interactions.
SAP
You might not have heard about SAP; they’re an enterprise software company. However, their native advertising on Forbes is a great example of the practice. Their article ‘10 Leadership Lessons I wish I’d Learned in my 20s’ was published on the Forbes website and it was a sucess because the content took into account the style of Forbes’ own articles and was targeted to the audience of Forbes.
How Do I Do It?

• Learn to news-jack

Keep an eye on the news topics that people are most interested in and see if any of it could be relevant to your brand. Then create advertising that ties into the interest. You can see what content is popular by looking at what’s trending on twitter and by seeing which news articles are most popular on sites like Alltop.

• Really think about design

The IAB explains that form is an important part of making a native advertisement work. Therefore, it’s helpful to get a designer on board wit you. The ad needs to be designed to look like a natural part of the web page you are planning to publish it on.

• Include a disclosure

You must always declare that your native ad is an ad by using the title or tag sponsored content. This is because Internet users don’t like to feel they have been duped or conned in anyway into reading your content.

• Inspire emotion

Countless studies have shown that the most engaging online content is emotive. If you can make some laugh through your native ad, or make them feel happy or motivated, then you’ll have higher engagement.

• Don’t be lazy

Don’t rely on design and a emotive headline to get people to engage with your native advertising. Once they’ve clicked on your content, readers want to be rewarded. Follow through on a good headline with copy that’s informative, well-researched, and novel. All these things together should lead to a successful native ad.
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