Commentary
Native Ads, RTB & The 'Bounce Effect'
- by Lindsay O'Gorman , March 17, 2014
The fact that there could be news relating to such a nascent advertising format as native advertising seems a little premature, but this fast-moving new genre has attracted incredible attention and interest from publishers and advertisers alike that it’s not altogether surprising. The news that Yahoo has launched its own …
Lindsay, many of your points are right on the money, but I believe these should be applied to content marketing, or dare I call it by what it actually is - content advertising. It is true, whenever paid advertising is disguised as content, no matter how well defined it is labeled 'sponsored' or 'brought to you by', it can lead to higher bounce rates by users who initially click through but come to realize the content is not as valuable to them as the header suggested. While buyers should understand this when they are pricing this type of content advertising, the same does not hold true to traditional native advertising - advertising that aligns itself stylistically with its host publication. These ads, which are cleary marked as such, function the same as banners, except that they simply match the look and feel of the site and are not disruptive. A consumer can identify the true native campaign as an ad, and if they click, then it functions the same as any piece of advertising.