A recent survey from the content marketing site Copyblogger reported only 51 percent of marketers were familiar with the term “native advertising.” And of those, only 3 percent were very knowledgeable on the topic, enough to utilize it on their own in their marketing strategies.
The reason why many digital marketers don’t understand native advertising is that they confuse it with display advertising. But, native digital marketing yields far better results than traditional display ads and has secondary benefits for SEO and online reputation management.
What is native advertising?
Native advertising is the creation and distribution of content on third-party platforms that fit natively within that platform. There are two primary types of native content: Sponsored and Recommended.
- Sponsored Content. Sponsored content is usually a post or piece of content that a company pays the platform to display to a target audience. For example, when a company creates a Facebook or Instagram page and shares images on the platform without creating an “ad,” they are posting natively. When they boost or sponsor that post to increase the audience, it’s native advertising. Sponsored content looks just like regular content, but it will reach a larger and more specific audience than other posts.
- Recommended Content. Some websites will recommend content from other sites if it fits with their brand. You see this all the time on websites such as U.S. Weekly and Buzzfeed where they recommend materials from other sources that target a similar market.
Why You Need to Use Native Advertising
Native advertising is a key way for you to reach your customers in a way that’s hard to ignore. When your customers see your posts within their social media feeds and on their favorite websites, they are more likely to view, click, and even convert to sales.
Customers also develop something called “ad blindness” from traditional display ads. They become accustomed to the conventional placement and format of ads and tune them out when scrolling. But native ads appear just like other posts and content. Sometimes consumers don’t even realize they’re looking at an ad. This can build a better relationship with consumers online, and prompt them to follow your social channels.
Your ad also has the potential to go viral. Unless very carefully executed, no other type of traditional advertising tends to organically grow as fast as native advertising.
To learn more about native advertising and other ways to effectively communicate about your products and services, contact Tucker/Hall today.
