Why is Native Advertising Effective?

The ways we advertise our brands or products to encourage consumers to engage with us have changed drastically over the past decade. Remember those incessant pop-up ads whenever you would click on a website’s URL? Remember feeling immediately turned off by the site and exiting out? Yeah, those annoying ads are now a thing of the past. Rather than being the main focus of the content, and potentially disrupting customers, native advertising provides content in the context of the existing user experience. Success is based on relevancy, engagement, and share ability. It’s advertisement that blends in with its surroundings.

Traditional forms of “interruption” marketing such as pop-up ads are proving to be ineffective. Last year alone, approximately 200 million people installed ad-blocking software worldwide to combat display ads. Developing quality content is the key to getting around ad-blocking programs.

Your content should meet the following criteria:

• Organically displayed on an external website.
• Designed to fit in with the natural flow of the publication.
• Curated for the target audience.

Since we’re now in a world where most of what we publish online is heavily content-based, native advertising offers advertisers a way to reach out to their audience without being overbearing. According to research, this means that many native ads are viewed for the same amount of time as editorial content, and native ads are far more likely to be shared than banner ads, increasing your marketing potential for going viral. 

Three Benefits of Native Advertising

1. Captures More Attention

If you can’t get your audience to engage with your advertisements – it’s pointless. For professionals in the world of marketing, performance metrics are essential, and native advertising generally offers higher viewing rates, greater conversions, and more engagement than almost any advertisement. If you’re using native advertising to share content, you can even increase your chances of your audience doing the marketing for you, by sharing sponsored tweets with friends, or liking your Facebook posts.

2. Builds Relevance

Being able to form a trusting and loyal relationship with your customers is an essential part of not only building a network of devoted buyers and encouraging the arrival of new customers who may want to join in. When brands associate the content of their native advertisement with the target’s tastes and the outlet in question, they improve their level of shareability – which is the best way to help your chances of going viral.

3. Empowers Customers

When I shop online, I’m usually looking for a solution to a problem, such as a phone case that will protect my phone from shattering if I drop it. Many people have similar thoughts and as such, they appreciate valuable content from brands that seems to want to provide assistance, rather than simply make money. Using native advertising, it is possible to present branded content in a subtle and convincing way that offers empowering information to customers. You need to convince your customers that you care about them and not just about the money. Often, you’ll see customers reward you for this effort with their loyalty.