Native advertisements are a bit of a misnomer. (In practice, assimilated ads might be a more fitting term.) If you subscribe to more pure journalistic opinions, native ads may even feel more like a digital invasive species. But for marketers and content consumption realists, native ads are a welcome improvement on the “click me” desperation of many digital ads, and — when done well — prove more useful and appealing to consumers and the brands behind them… which is why we chose native advertising as our Marketing Word of the Week!
What is a Native Ad?
As content channels continue to multiply, journalists and user-produced content continue to elbow for screen space with advertisements of all shapes and sizes. But unlike display ads or banner ads, native advertisements are all about context. Also referred to as sponsored or branded content, native ads look and feel like the content around them. Whether you realized it or not, you’ve most likely seen native ads swimming in your social networks and news sites, from sponsored posts on Facebook to pieces of content on your favorite lists on Buzzfeed.
Here are a few examples:
These ads looks and feel like perusable pieces of news, and that is by design. Native ads are a shift towards advertising with aesthetic synthesis in mind so as not to interrupt the user’s experience.
Where Are Native Ads?
The short answer? Everywhere. Sponsored content is populating everywhere from The New York Times to Buzzfeed. Native ads are in your morning news and editorial outlets like Quartz, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and Gawker; nested in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; and imbedded in entertainment platforms from Hulu to Pandora. They also encompass paid search results in search engines like Google and Bing, and content recommendation engines featured on the likes of Fast Company and Forbes.
Sponsored vs. Trusted Content
Just as black-and-white TV wasn’t designated “black-and-white” until color television came along, the rise of branded content has caused traditional journalism to be dubbed “trusted content” in digital advertising parlance. This distinction between trusted and sponsored content has created a dichotomy of consumer confidence.
Political pundit Andrew Sullivan of The Dish has been particularly outspoken in his distaste for native advertisements, highlighting the blurry distinction between editorial and advertorial content: “If journalism is so enmeshed in selling things that ads and editorial are one hard-to-define mush, then its core value – independent editorial judgment – is inevitably debased.”
In response to many such criticisms, many journalistic establishments use design elements to differentiate between the “mush” of trusted and sponsored content. In December 2013, The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., for example, announced the incorporation of native ads in their latest redesign, but the launch came with reader-sensitive qualifications. Sulzberger noted there will be a “strict separation between the newsroom and the job of creating content for the new native ads.”
Why Go Native?
Whether you love them or hate them, native ads are digital advertising products that feature prominently in advertising revenue streams, and for good reason: when employed strategically, native ads can expose a brand to more diverse audiences. Remember, native ads are all about context, so their imbedded nature allows them to essentially borrow the credibility of their host site. But of course, keep in mind the defining cautionary tale of native advertising: The Atlantic‘s Scientology debacle. Clearly at odds with the tastes of The Atlantic‘s readership, this infamous piece of sponsored content highlights the need for native ads to match their host site not merely in design, but in message as well.
So if you’re using native ads in your marketing strategy, learn from The Atlantic‘s example and keep your target audience in mind!