The debate on native advertising is, like native
advertising, multifaceted. Even without fulling grasping what it is, people are debating if it useful for digital marketers. Let's take it step by step.
What is Native
Advertising?
DigiDay posed this question to some digital execs. The
responses are riddled with industry terms, like organic, monetization and ad
units. Even worse, some used the word native in describing it; that would be an
automatic DQ in Catchphrase. However, I
thought Ben Kunz’s response was wonderful. He says, “The intent is to have a
paid message break out of the advertising clutter in a new way, by elevating it
to appear like the real unbiased content users are seeking.” I think this is
excellent because it covers native advertising on both social platforms and
digital publications.
On Social Media
On social media, native advertising comes in the form of
sponsored stories and promoted posts/tweets. This content is just like any
other content a user would post to the platform/medium, except that the content
owner PAID (so now we consider them an advertiser) to reach a larger audience.
In a
Spin Sucks article Gini Dietrich used an example of an
Instagram campaign where users tagged photos of Jay Peak ski resort to
#jaypeakresort. User-generated content is NOT native advertising. That is
earned media. Initially, I thought that if a business had paid users to post
the "user-generated" content that could be, but after analyzing more for this post, I decided
that is still not native advertising. The native aspect means it, as Kunz
explained, must appear like the content users are seeking on that platform. Because
the medium is the one that controls the way content is displayed (and thus can
be the one to manipulate it), they must be the one selling the native
advertising. In the Jay Peak’s example, it would only be native advertising if
Jay Peak paid Instagram to show photos tagged with #jaypeakresort higher on
feeds (not just chronologically) for other similar tags, such as #ski and
#snow. (Instagram, five percent of all profits from this new revenue-generating
plan is a great way to say thank you.)
On Digital Publications
Digital publications’ native advertising is an advertorial.
I’m sure you’ve seen them in magazines. An article about how a brand name
pharmaceutical helped someone get their life back on track. It appears like a
human interest piece, except that somewhere it must identify that it is paid
content. Rather than the publication (the medium) selling reach, they are
selling the space that appears like the content the user is seeking—articles in
this case.
Is Native Advertising
Deceptive?
For social media, native advertising is always clearly
marked as a sponsored story or promoted tweet, so I don’t think it is deceptive
in that aspect. In the Facebook example image above, using a user's name walks a fine line, but Facebook offers you the
option to opt out of being used in ads. As for digital publication’s native
advertising,
The Atlantic got some heat following a sponsored article from The Church of Scientology. It was marked as Sponsor Content at the top,just as an advertorial in a print publication would. However, the comments section seemed to be the rough spot for this native advertising. Would it be less deceptive if comments were turned off and another
notice indicating that it is an ad (thus no comments necessary) replaced the usual comment box?
Does Native
Advertising Work?
As Dietrich said in her article, nearly everyone knows how to “click past
banner ads, watch the required five seconds of an ad before skipping it to go
on to a video, click out of pop-up ads, and fast forward through commercials
during television programs.” But having your ads appear where the audience is “listening”
doesn’t necessarily mean they will attune to it. For instance, Pepto Bismol ads on
my Facebook news feed are incredibly disruptive. This could be because the
content choice for the medium was bad or just the wrong medium altogether. Using Pepto Bismol,
let’s see how both of these matter in using native advertising.
Choosing the right content
Their picture of a
big ol’ bottle of the pink stuff on my Facebook newsfeed turns me off, because I see it for what it is, an ad. A picture of an empty pizza box and someone holding their stomach may have
pulled me in. My friends post status updates about their latest food conquests,
so sharing similar content makes sense.
Choosing the right medium
Had I been on WebMD reading up on symptoms of heartburn, a
sponsored article about Pepto Bismol treating heartburn would definitely be
relevant. Seeing that big ol’ bottle of the pink stuff would almost be
comforting to me in that medium.
Now that you know more about what native advertising is and how it works,
will you try it?
Social media ROI doesn't have to be elusive. Seriously.
