How boring a life could be, without advertisements? We never lived a life like that – without advertisements! So drop the thought and accept the reality that ads are omnipresent, whether it is on TV, Radio, Internet or Hoardings.
The digital space is always a luring factor for all new age marketers and they have always been in search of new techniques and actions that could stick customers to the brand. First, it was display advertisement and customer interaction. Then the tiny era of content came in. Pumping out contents which are “good” and letting netizens to share and take up the propagation was another recent style in social media. Some marketers still do and it may work, but advertisements are now reaching a whole new level. Advertisements are re-cooked well, especially in digital marketing. Now, there is a new dish on the plate – Native Advertising. So what does it mean? You may find a lot of definitions varying in length for Native Advertisement, but it could be said simply as:
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“An advertisement which pretends as content”. Inculcation of an ad into the organic experience of a given platform is the vital trait of Native Advertising.
We have framed our mind and divided out computer screen into different sections. We were educated enough to differentiate the space for advertisement and the place for our online social activities. The big bang? Digital advertisements have taken charge and have started crossing the barriers and appearing in ‘our space’ as we – the users started having blind spots over the ad space on our screen. We started avoiding ads that are appearing on our Facebook pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. Thus advertisements found a new way, i.e. Native Ads and it would be the only available way to advertise for many marketers who value user experience.
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You might have seen such new ads on your Facebook, along with new stories from your friends and contacts, or on Twitter as promotions. Promoted videos on YouTube, highlighted posts on Tumblr and Gawker’s promoted articles are other good examples of Native Advertising. According to an info-graphic by Solve Media and Column Five, the expected increase in the Native Ads spending for 2013 will be 12.6% compared to 2012. The same report also confirms that the traditional display advertisement methods are performing badly during the recent times. The pre roll skip rate (Do you remember skipping a video or a roll-ad before it completes?) for display ads are hiking and also around 99% of the display ads are ignored, the infographic says. Some are tagging Native Advertising as an emerging miracle in digital marketing arena. Some look at it as just another marketing ploy that will soon be replaced by the next trend. All we can do now is to wait and watch if Native Advertising can strike the ball higher!
“Nobody reads advertisements, people read what they want to read, and sometimes it is an ad” -Howard Luck Gossage, Advertising pioneer
