Native advertising is heating up in digital media these days, and there are plenty of reasons why publishers should get excited. To start, a recent
studyfrom BI Intelligence forecasts native ad spend to hit $7.9 billion
this year (a 69% increase from 2013) and reach $21 billion by 2018. Publishers, that’s significant revenue opportunity up for grabs.
But aside from the clear market opportunity that
publishers can gain from offering native advertising solutions, there are a few other reasons why native should be a top priority for publishers: not just deciding to do it, but also setting up the
right processes, infrastructure, and policies to ensure native helps further accelerate their business.
Native allows publishers to get more creative with content. While traditional
banner ads have historically served as the lifeblood for digital publishers, native has risen to celebrity status, offering publishers a fresh way for brands to connect with their target audiences
with more engaging, creative content. Major publishers players are taking big advantage of this opportunity; the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and others are all tapping into
their deep bench of storytellers to build content studio teams (including videographers) to create branded content. As a result, publishers are further extending their brand as providers of quality
content, alongside award-winning editorial content.
Native provides publishers more meaningful
measurement insights and better results. The native format — based on content rather than graphics and text captions —opens up a whole host of engagement and attention metrics that
give publishers and their clients deeper insights into their consumers. For example, last year, Upworthy announced it would embrace “time-spent” as a better metric of reader engagement
than traditional stats. And most recently, premium publishers — Conde Nast, Forbes, ESPN, and others — were reported to be following this trend. A Digital Content Next (formerly known as
Online Publishers Association) survey found that 80% were interested in pricing and selling their ad inventory according to time-based metrics.
While native advertising has only really began
to take hold the past few years, preliminary results already show incredibly promising results for consumer engagement and attention metrics. For example, in a study by IPG Media Labs and Sharethrough, subjects were 25% more likely to look at a native ad than
they were at a banner. Consumers also looked at native ads 53% more frequently.
Native expands publishers' portfolio of digital ad solutions. Marketers are always looking for new ways
to reach and engage their audience. While native is not a new concept by any means — think of newspaper and magazines’ advertorials — this new native resurgence provides marketers
with an exciting new digital channel to explore. While marketers’ goals will vary from campaign to campaign, the good news is that marketers are already receptive to native executions (evidenced
by increasing native ad spend projections). Among many factors, we have content marketing to thank for priming the pump—marketers are now well bought into the fact that content has positive
impact across the sales and marketing funnel. Publishers’ new native ad formats provide a fresh perspective on content marketing initiatives.
Last but not least, there is something to be
said about the increased sophistication of ad technology out there, which is making native uptake easier.
Planning Future Offerings
The key for publishers in adopting native
will be to get it right — to make it work seamlessly for both consumers and marketers — and to work with the rest of the industry to alleviate natural growing pains, adopting the
appropriate industry guidelines necessary for any emerging ad format.