• by Bill Guild , October 31, 2013

When I was a kid, my mom and dad used to pool their talents to produce a themed birthday cake. I had cars, cowboys, and animals, and I loved those cakes. They were too beautiful to cut, so each year I had to face the harsh reality that I couldn’t have my cake and eat it, too. Now advertisers face that same dilemma as they try to define their strategies around native advertising and programmatic media buying.
 
The definition of native advertising seems to be a work in progress. Definitions I have heard range from, “any ad that is designed to look like it belongs on the page” to “paid content that blends brand messaging with editorial content that appears similar too and in the same placement as editorial content.”  What these definitions have in common is that they the brand messages are designed to look, feel, and read like the content in which they are placed.  And that is the root of the disconnect between native and programmatic.
 
While native ads are intended to blend in, programmatic ad spaces are distinctly carved out. Programmatic media trading is based on a set of standards within which both sides are free to do anything they please. The ad size and location are clearly defined, the ad’s behaviors and message are constrained by rules and audits, and the ad content of the page is categorized. 

Within these bounds, the site can publish any content and the ad can make any presentation.  There is no attempt to synchronize the two. The programmatic marketplace is liquid because one ad can run in a wide variety of places and each ad space can accept a huge variety of ads.  In fact, some of the exchange-traded inventory is still sold blind and bundled, which makes it impossible for buyers to know exactly where the ad will appear.  If you don’t know where an ad might appear, and the ad is intended to appear in a wide range of places, then it naturally follows that the ad can’t possibly be designed to look like it belongs in all those places.
 
Both native and programmatic have their benefits and both have a place in a marketing strategy.  Endemic buys, those where the content is a perfect fit for the brand message, usual offer a very high concentration of well-qualified prospects. Endemic buys are simple to identify and easy to plan and buy in advance. These placements lend themselves perfectly to direct buying and native advertising. 

For example, a tripod manufacturer should buy impressions on camera and photography sites.  The ads on those sites will be most engaging and most effective if they are designed to fit into the content of the site.
 
But, endemic buys are notoriously limited in reach.  Many of the well-qualified prospects will never show up on those endemic sites.  To discover and reach the numerous niche audiences that together comprise the complete market opportunity for a brand, marketers need to deploy a programmatic buy.  The programmatic buy can discover those niche audiences and reach them wherever they are engaged on the Internet.
 
Whereas the performance of a native ad on an endemic buy is derived from its’ relevance and high engagement rate among a concentrated audience, the performance of a programmatic campaign is derived by efficiently sorting the wheat from the chaff.  Native ads on endemic placements do the best job of capturing a known audience when they are engaged in an activity related to your brand.  Programmatic buying does the best job of ferreting out the rest of your audience and engaging them wherever they may be.
 
Fortunately for marketers, a well-crafted plan can and should include both endemic/native and programmatic buys so you can finally have your cake and eat it, too.