Native advertising has been steadily gaining traction in recent times and for very good reason. Every websites aim is to drive traffic and consumer engagement. Great content does exactly that, people will always be attracted by great content. Native advertising is basically content that is interlaced with endorsements for a particular product or service while simultaneously carrying content that the consumer will find relevant to their needs and interests.
This approach has proved more popular among advertisers due to its effectiveness with the consumer. Alternative to the traditional advert, sponsored or native content is a new wrapper for the one component that drives all consumer engagement and that component is high quality, relevant content. Publishers and marketers alike have to work very closely to establish a blue print for viable native content, publishers will have a better understanding of which type of content resonates with the consumer and the marketer will have a clear idea of the market they wish to target.
In figures published by eMarketer, marketers are expected to spend $1.9 billion on sponsored content this year, that figure is up by 22% on the previous year with the numbers involved expected to rise by as much as $3.1 billion by 2017. From these figures it is clear to see that this burgeoning industry is growing at an exponential rate and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Below is an informative list of statistics pertaining to native advertising complied by Marketing Profs
Measurement and Monetization
• Publishers (70%) and brands (66%) prefer to use traffic or audience figures to measure the effectiveness of native advertising campaigns.
• Native advertising account for an average of 20% of total current publisher revenues. The publishers surveyed expect it to constitute 30% of their total revenues within a year.
• Publishers say the most effective forms of native advertising for monetization are blogs (58%), articles (56%), and videos (53%); agencies and brands rank videos number one, and they are also more positive about Facebook and infographics.
Statistics by Marketing Profs also state.
“The majority (62%) of digital content publishers now offer native advertising opportunities, such as sponsored blog posts, according to a recent report by Hexagram and Spada.
Moreover, 16% of publishers that do not currently offer native advertising options plan to start doing so within a year.
The study also found that 41% of brands have already run native advertising campaigns, and 20% of those that haven’t plan on doing so within a year.”
From these statistics, we can see that blogs, sponsored content, videos and articles are the main players in today’s content creation stratosphere. Videos and sponsored content in particular are having a big influence on the types of content that are being published. With new capabilities opening up in terms of broadband speeds and their wide catchment area, video in particular is likely to gain even more traction in the near future. It is all about understanding your audience and placing the right content, in the right places at the right time. Companies who provide this kind of content in an original, relevant, valuable, concise form establish themselves as authorities in their field and in doing so; enhance their brand in the process.
This form of advertising is not without its drawbacks, the lines are blurred slightly when it comes to how the native advertising is perceived and more importantly, how it is labelled, if at all. There are also questions about how much of an influence the companies being advertised exert over material itself. Publishers have to be extremely careful with the content that they publish, if the content is not clearly labelled as native advertising or sponsored content then an element of skulduggery will be assumed by the consumer leading to a long term loss of audience. This is a scenario which no one desires, good sense can cut this risk to minimal by clear labelling of said content so as not to be construed as being misleading or misinforming the consumer.
Consumers will always seek out high quality, relevant content, content that informs and entertains. Publishers and advertisers alike have to tread very carefully to ensure that all native content is clearly labelled as such and is transparently differentiated from traditional ordinary content, do this and the trend is showing all the signs it will continue to be successful and lucrative, fail to do this and there could be a backlash from consumers that some companies may struggle to recover from.
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By Charlie Gallagher