Future Of Advertising: Report Finds 22% Of Marketers Believe All Online Ads Will Be Native

A new report from content marketing platform OneSpot and digital media consultancy firm 614 Group says that 22% of marketers believe native is where all online advertising is headed.

The report, which is expected to be released Wednesday, comes from 487 U.S. marketing professions that 614 Group and OneSpot surveyed about content marketing in May and June 2014.

Only 9% of respondents believe native advertising is a “fad soon to be forgotten,” while 69% believe it’s a valuable niche — but not necessarily a mainstream ad offering.

When it comes to targeting, over half (56%) of content marketers are using basic demographic information when buying ads, and 24% are using behavioral targeting. Only 22% of marketers use third-party data sources.

Interestingly, 20% of marketers are purely focused on traffic and clicks and don’t have any targeting approach when it comes to content marketing placement. In addition, only 15% of content marketing budgets go toward measurement and optimization.

The majority of the content marketing budget is allocated toward creation (37%), a highly manual process.

The same marketers are disappointed with their own efforts, though. The report says 47% are dissatisfied with their ability to distribute content to the right audience

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6 comments about "Future Of Advertising: Report Finds 22% Of Marketers Believe All Online Ads Will Be Native".
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  1. Kevin Horne from Verizon, July 30, 2014 at 1:52 p.m.

    "...22% of marketers believe native is where all (ALL ???) online advertising is headed..." Further proof that no one understands exactly what "native" advertising is.

  2. Tom Goodwin from Tomorrow, July 30, 2014 at 6:04 p.m.

    This would be a really good report if someone had managed to define adequately native advertising first.

  3. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, July 30, 2014 at 8:03 p.m.

    One might gather from this study that a good many of the "marketers" who responded not only don't have a clue as to what "native advertising" is but are pretty clueless, generally.

  4. Al Chen from Cooperatize, July 30, 2014 at 11:05 p.m.

    Seems like native advertising is just a well-branded name for an old marketing concept. I'm guessing the study focuses on long-form sponsored content, in which case the data makes sense. A ton of resources are spent on creating the content, but distribution after creating this really thoughtful piece of content is always a challenge.

    At Cooperatize, we've bundled the content creation and distribution into one package, so you get content creation AND distribution at an efficient cost.

    How about that as a great example of a "native ad" in a MediaPost comment?

  5. Adam Weinroth from OneSpot, August 6, 2014 at 12:46 p.m.

    Hi all, just chiming in with further details on the report respondents and methodology - which will hopefully serve as better context for understanding the results.

    1. The 487 U.S. based respondents were fairly evenly represented between B2C brands (30%), B2B brands (24%), agency professionals (25%) and other marketing professionals i.e. consultants, non-profit marketers, etc (21%). All respondents were qualified at the beginning of the survey for partial or full responsibility for content marketing within their organizations and were screened from further questions if they did not meet either of those criteria. Respondents were not incentivized for participating in the survey, although we certainly appreciated their taking time to share their perspectives.

    2. Some of the previous comments raise the widely discussed challenge of our industry still working towards consensus on how exactly to define Native Advertising. While native means different (sometimes very different) things to different marketers, we felt it was worthwhile to get a general attitudinal gauge as part of our research. Here are some resources on the topic of defining native - which is a whole other can of worms.

    Native Advertising: Defying Definability (OneSpot)
    http://www.onespot.com/blog/native-advertising-defying-definability/

    IAB Native Advertising Playbook (IAB)
    http://www.iab.net/nativeadvertising

    Defining and Mapping the Native Advertising Landscape (Altimeter)
    http://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/report-defining-and-mapping-the-native-advertising-landscape-by-rebecca-lieb

    I hope this helps, and thanks for checking out the survey.

  6. Maria Shinkevich from MGID, August 11, 2014 at 10:47 a.m.

    It is becoming clear that many marketers are confused about the terms "native advertising" and "content marketing." Native advertising can be a part of a content marketing strategy (in terms of content distribution and promotion) and our experience shows that when content is promoted through native advertising, the ROI is very good.

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