• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 17, 2016

With almost half of American households (48%) owning stock, the potential audience for investment advice is huge – but reaching the investors with relevant content, in the right context, is a different matter.

Digital investment news and analysis publisher The Motley Fool approached the problem with a novel solution, leveraging native advertising through Yahoo’s Gemini platform to recruit new subscribers.

The native campaign, deployed in conjunction with display ads and SEO strategies, drew on Motley Fool’s editorial content to create ads with timely messages, based around current events and stock market trends. It utilizes frequent rotation of the native content messaging to ensure its relevance.

Interested users could click the ads to access more related editorial content or register for more information.

Typical topics for the native ad posts included retirement planning and social security, recent episodes of the popular investor pitch show “Shark Tank,” and of course, investment advice from The Motley Fool.

According to The Motley Fool and Yahoo, the campaign resulted in a click-through rate 62% higher than the financial services industry benchmark, while the cost per thousand impressions was 52% lower than the industry standard.

John Piontkowski, vice president and industry lead for finance at Yahoo, described Gemini as “our unified marketplace for search and native advertising across devices. That means advertisers can buy, manage, and optimize their search and native ad spend in one place through Yahoo Gemini.”

In the fourth quarter of 2015, there were 350 billion native ad requests for third-party mobile app inventory on Yahoo Gemini, accounting for more than half of Yahoo Gemini impressions. Yahoo also found that native seems to appeal to all demographics — with the most resonance among 25- to 34-year-olds and 35- to 44-year-olds, at 32% and 38%, respectively.