Welcome back!

We hope you all had a great weekend (filled with BBQ & fireworks for our U.S. readers)! Today, we’re continuing July’s theme by zooming in on a type of advertising gaining traction in an increasingly banner-blind world.

Ads get a bad rap, and they’re everywhere— so they’re easy to ignore unless they’re particularly relevant or unique. We’ve become so desensitized to ads that our brains often filter them out to focus on our purpose for clicking on that website or scrolling on that app.

But what if an ad blends so seamlessly into a platform that you don’t realize it’s an ad until after your attention has been grabbed? That’s where native advertising comes in.

Let’s dive in! 📲

News

Tools + Productivity

Strategy

Benefits by the numbers

Unlike banners barging in on your screen, native ads don’t feel so intrusive, and they relate to the content viewers came for in the first place. This is why they produce higher click-through rates and conversions.

If that didn’t catch your attention— you’re 475 times more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad.

Don’t get us wrong, it’s not about tricking viewers into thinking the ad they're looking at isn’t paid for. Users are well aware that native ads are paid, but that doesn’t stop these ads from getting higher engagement than traditional methods.

Users look at native ads 53% more frequently than display ads. If that’s not enough, native ads also create an 18% boost in purchase intent.

To see this in action, Michelin lowered their cost per visitor to the website by 16% with native ads, while increasing the quality of that traffic with relevant audiences.

Given their track record, it makes sense to start including these ads in your strategy, so let’s dig into the how:

Choose Your Chameleon’s Habitat

As media options expand on the web, so do options for ad formats. Today, there are advertorials, image & video native advertisements, and all the most popular social media platforms to choose from.

TikTok and Instagram ads look just like the unsponsored content the user scrolls to view, except that sometimes they’re tagged with “promoted” or “sponsored.”

TikTok shows “sponsored” right below the caption and then provides a clickable link at the end to your product or site.

If you know your audience, you can choose the style that aligns most with your message to serve the people driving conversions.

If your brand is based around a story, videos are the way to go, but if your product range is your strong suit— Instagram carousels might be the move.

In this case, a video best showcases Altran Engineering’s hyperloop through the story of the students designing the pod, and the location of the ad (FT’s Industrial Tech page) matches perfectly:

What separates this from a typical banner ad is the ad’s relevance to its parking spot and its engaging, high-quality production quality on par with the quality of Financial Times content.

Here’s an example of an advertorial, which is a type of native advertisement presented in the form of editorial content:

Native ads clearly involve a lot more customization. Plus, you need to have something to offer other than your product, whether that be entertainment or education. Still, this effort pays off through more clicks and a more engaged audience.

Content is 🔑: Crafting Compelling Native Ads

We mentioned earlier that native ads deliver the “buy me” message more subtly than typical banner ads.

This means that the content of the ad shouldn’t directly spotlight your product, but rather contribute relevant content that matches the platform you’re advertising on.

OrbitGum cleverly made a short comedic video skit ad on the website CollegeHumor, subtly implying the product’s value while contributing entertaining content that fits right in with the website:

The point is— the content of your ad has to change based on the platform’s purpose.

You’re probably aware of the satirical news site, the Onion. See how native ads look different here compared to earlier examples:

On TikTok, native advertisement means showing your product in the context of a trend that already exists.

Makeup routine videos are common on TikTok, so a host of brands have used this trend to showcase their products:

On Twitter/X, native ads also look just like regular posts, making them a great opportunity to use built-in interactive features on the platform, like polls & quizzes.

Programmatic Native Advertising

This term might be less familiar, but it’s a potent way to make your ads more effective. Here’s the breakdown:

Think of programmatic advertising like ordering pizza through an app. Instead of calling and negotiating with different pizza places (which could take forever), you just tap a few buttons and boom—your pizza is on its way. Programmatic advertising works similarly.

The players:

• Advertisers: Like you, craving the best pizza (ad space).

• Publishers: Pizza places with delicious offerings (websites with ad space).

• Ad Exchanges: The app connecting you to all these pizza places (digital marketplaces for ads).

  • DSPs (Demand Side Platforms): Your trusty pizza app that helps you choose the best deals (software for advertisers to buy ad space).

  • SSPs (Supply Side Platforms): The platform that pizza places use to show off their menus (software for publishers to sell ad space).

• A list of DSPs/SSPs

The process:

• Targeting: You’re craving pizza, so the app shows you places that match your taste (the DSP figures out which ads suit the user).

• Bidding: In milliseconds, it finds the best price for your pizza (DSPs bid on ad spots in real-time).

• Ad Serving: You pick your pizza, and it’s delivered hot and fresh (the winning ad appears to the user instantly).

• Optimization: The app remembers your preference for future orders (advertisers tweak their strategy based on how well the ad performed).

Looking Ahead

The toughest part about native advertising is that you can’t just park your ads on every website and wait for clicks to come through.

This type of advertising requires you to have a ‘native‘ understanding of the platform the ad runs on (it’s in the name, after all!) so that you can tailor ads to the platform.

Similarly, the content of the ad has to be catered towards your audience and less sales-y than banner ads.

These days, ads have to add value (no pun intended) to make an impact, and native ads do that by contributing pieces that would work as stand-alone content.

Join us next week to dig into affiliate marketing, another tool to (ad)d to your marketing arsenal.

Social Media Strategy
Week 1: Paid Social Media Advertising
Week 2: Native Advertising (this week!)
Week 3: Affiliate Marketing
Week 4: Paid Search
Week 5: Display Advertising

Stay tuned!

REFERRAL PROGRAM

Hey! Don’t keep us a secret! Refer your friends and start earning rewards! Share this link with your friends: https://beyond9to5.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

If you get just 3 friends to subscribe you’ll get our exclusive sticker pack OR refer more and earn a trip to Vegas!

Your Progress