Native Ads: Advertising Consumers Like? Mobile Tech Seems to Think So…

“Native advertising is an online advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user's experience. Native ad formats match both the form and the function of the user experience in which it is placed. The advertiser's intent is to make the paid advertising feel less intrusive and thus increase the likelihood users will click on it.” !-Via Wikipedia

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(Image via TechCrunch)

Native advertising has been a topic popping up in tech news more-and-more recently: On 5 February, we picked up a story by Tom Cheredar on VentureBeat, reporting that Pandora is moving towards implementing native advertising in Pandora connected cars, as doing so would present an opportunity to boost their ad revenues in connected cars (though hours spent on Pandora in cars only account for a very small sector of their overall traffic.) !Shortly after, WARC reported that Mozilla (a company known to be “anti-marketing”) is thinking of adopting a native advertising platform to boost their ad revenues. !And, just yesterday, MarketingWeek reported from MWC 2014 that Millennial Media’s Mollie Spillman (EVP of Global Sales, former CMO of Yahoo! and regular Huffington Post contributor) states that “native advertising is still misunderstood on mobile.” !What does this all mean? !Native advertising is content driven. It relies on humor and a common frame of reference to engage the user and get them to click through. Partners such as BuzzFeed, Cracked and Facebook all employ and host native advertising. Perhaps this indicates that the advertising consuming public is becoming more savvy and demanding of what they will “click-thru?” !As Christopher Ratcliff cites in his eConsultancy article from this past January “You’re more likely to die in a plane crash then click on a banner ad.” !Truer words were never spoken. The shift towards native advertising means that marketers and advertisers need to embrace the idea that their sponsored ad content can ADD VALUE to user enjoyment of a product, as opposed to being an annoyance that detracts from user enjoyment/engagement with the same product.

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Think of Superbowl ads: There are millions and millions of people worldwide who only tune into the Superbowl game to see the advertising. Now, explain to us why that has to be a once a year, one medium only event? Native advertising doesn’t have to be video, the concept can easily be translated into assets which work in print, radio, digital and other formats. If all advertising -beyond mobile, even- were as compelling, entertaining and contextual as Superbowl ads, wouldn’t that be a good thing? !For everyone? !We think so. And, we think that smart mobile app owners will look for opportunities to craft engaging native advertising to promote their business. !Because, does the world really need another staid banner ad? !-Kate Kotler, Writer

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