Marketers Still Not Sold On Native Advertising

by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, July 7, 2014

Forget transparency, or the fear of losing consumers’ trust. What’s really keeping more marketers from going native is a lack of quality content, continued measurement issues and the category’s perceived inability to trade programmatically.

That’s according to new research from DMR and TripleLift, which included input from over 100 digital media buyers from Starcom MediaVest, MEC, Carat, Mediacom, Mindshare and other agencies.

While a clear majority of marketers (68%) believe in the promise of native, roughly 27% of digital media buyers said they abstain from the category for various reasons. Quality creative is a big issue -- particularly appropriate images. When it comes to engagement, 80% of respondents said an ad’s image is more likely to affect a consumer taking an action then an ad’s copy.

Scale and measurement were also cited as problem areas, as well as various other reasons like “focused on TV,” “not enough knowledge on it,” and “not seen as a DR tool.”

In particular, a full 40% of buyers surveyed said measurement of native remains a challenge.

Many buyers are not sure whether native will mesh with the rise of programmatic advertising. All told, 60% of buyers said they don’t believe native can be bought programmatically, and 67% remained on the fence about trying.

On the bright side, 86% of respondents said native is more likely to be shared versus other forms of digital advertising.

Also of note, when it comes to where native campaigns are running, media buyers prioritize audience as the most important factor in evaluating media. The context in which the ad lives was cited as the second-most-important factor, followed by ad placement.

Earlier this year, J.P. Morgan predicted that native would take over digital channels in 2014. “We believe native ads are quickly becoming the de facto ad format on mobile and increasingly moving into desktop,” lead analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in J.P. Morgan’s annual “Nothing But Net” report.

eMarketer has predicted that the native niche would hit $2.85 billion this year.

advertising, marketing, media buying, native advertising, programmatic, research

2 comments about "Marketers Still Not Sold On Native Advertising".

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Leslie Singer from SingerSalt, July 8, 2014 at 4:41 p.m.
The conversation on Native Advertising is going the way of coffee, wine and chocolate. Depending on on the expert, it's either good for you or its going to kill you.
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Al DiGuido from Optimus Publishing, July 8, 2014 at 6:49 p.m.

The challenge with "native advertising" is that those who are proponents didn't "grow up" in special interest publishing ! As such..the conotation from those who are playing with this "shiny new toy" is advertorial. When those who are serious about creating effect special interest publications that have solo sponsors...then those publishers and entities will be the big winners. In the meantime..the profiteers will short change what can and should be a huge opportunity for content publishers & marketers.