• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, May 24, 2017

The use of data targeting in native ad campaigns, including both first- and third-party data, increased 3x between Q1 2016 and Q1 2017. That’s just one of the findings in Bidtellect’s Quarterly Native Report for Q1 2017.

The report, which analyzes native ad trends, also examined the data use in content marketing. While native advertising has often been perceived as an upper-funnel strategy to generate brand awareness, the report found that content is also used to connect and engage with consumers at all stages of the consumer lifecycle. In fact, adding data segments and retargeting strategies enables marketers to reach target audiences with their content and deliver sequential messaging as a consumer moves down the funnel.

Bidtellect found that B2B advertisers’ investments in account-based marketing (ABM), a type of marketing that treats a customer account  like its own market, are increasing. In fact, Bidtellect said that since integrating with Bombora, it’s seen a 340% increase in the use of ABM in the  first quarter of 2017. The finding indicates that B2B campaigns are enjoying success with native advertising and improved results through ABM.

The Report also found that retargeting has proven to be a valuable part of campaigns whether they’re direct response, looking for  conversions, or brand awareness. Bidtellect found that from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017 there was an 8.5 x increase in the use of retargeting capabilities in native campaigns.

Where standard native is concerned, the Report found that mobile click-through rates (CTR) are higher than desktop, but not by the same degree. And mobile CTR was higher than desktop CTR by 55%.

However, while desktop is still the more engaging device over mobile,  mobile is catching up and achieving deeper consumer engagement. This quarter, page views were only slightly higher on desktop than mobile, and the bounce rate was 55% lower on desktop than mobile.

In-feed native continues to rack up the highest engagement, with significantly higher pagev iews and lower bounce rate than both in-ad and recommendation widgets. Conversion goals (40%) overtook CTR (37%) as the primary campaign objective for Q1. Of course engagement (23%) continues to be an important indicator of success for marketers in their native campaigns.