With the popularity of banner ads plummeting, brands are shifting to embrace the power of native advertising, which 70 percent of consumers now prefer.
What is Native Advertising?
Native advertising seamlessly integrates paid content into a publisher’s website in a way that looks and feels like that site’s normal editorial content. Publishers clearly label this type of content with words like “promoted” or “sponsored.” A brand may either pay a publisher to create the content on their behalf, or the brand creates the content themselves.
Native ads benefit both publishers and brands alike. It provides the publishers with revenue, while offering brands exposure. Digital marketers use native ads to increase audience engagement or generate awareness.
Native ads frequently appear on mobile devices, in social media channels and on news websites.
Common Examples
- Suggested Stories or News Feed Ads on Facebook
- Promoted Tweets, Sponsored Tweets or Promoted Trends on Twitter
- Pay-per-click ads inside search engine results pages
- Sponsored content within a publication’s natural index of articles
- Custom ads that match-up users with their interests
How Can Native Ads Help My Business?
Native advertising increases your brand recognition by placing your content in front of a larger audience than it ordinarily reaches. Are you looking for more followers on Twitter? Choose a promoted post. A native ad appears like any other tweet, but instead of just reaching your followers, your content is displayed to new, targeted audiences.
Native ads may feature a call-to-action that entice visitors to take an action, such as download a free premium content. In return, you gain more information about potential customers.
A native ad campaign is effective, because it allows brands to piggyback on the existing traffic of a publisher’s platform. The more than one billion active monthly users on Facebook are an enormous resource for developing new business leads.
Today, there are plenty of native options, including the popular site BuzzFeed. Three-fourths of publishers offer some type of native advertising on their sites, according to Inc. magazine. That percentage is expected to grow in 2016.
Fat Guy Media’s Native Advertising
This is one of Fat Guy Media’s Sponsored video tweets. As part of our social media marketing strategy, we targeted a specific audience and promoted it on Twitter. The goal was to inform restaurant owners about our services and how we can help them. We have received high-quality web visits and early stage leads from our native marketing posts.
