Native advertising is one of the most underappreciated forms of advertising out there. However, if you take care of marketing for your company, it is a form of advertising that you should be using. Read to find out why, and how you can start leveraging it to your company’s advantage.

What Is Native Advertising?

Native advertising is simply the use of ads that match the appearance and feel of the medium they appear in. Unlike banner or pop-up ads, native ads are meant to not really look like ads. They are often used in social media, for example, and look like just other posts. The point of native advertising is that it is supposed to be non-disruptive.

How Effective Is Native Advertising?

People pay attention to native ads more than 150% as often as display ads. Modern consumers are bored with display ads. A lot of them just ignore them. Because native ads blend seamlessly into the content they are paying attention to, they don’t get ignored so much.

This is not to say that consumers are fooled into thinking that they aren’t ads. Consumers are fully aware that they are ads and not actual content. However, because of their unobtrusive nature, native ads don’t annoy or bore consumers so much, so they have a significant influence on purchasing behavior.

How Can I Get Started?

The majority of media companies and publishers have a native advertising program of some sort. Many of these even have staff that will work with you and help you create the kind of ad content that will seamlessly integrate with their content. After you decide on some locations where you think your native ads would do well, contact their advertising department and ask them how to get started.

What Are My Options?

The most common effective forms of native ads are sponsored social media updates, sponsored blog posts, and sponsored articles.

You can also go with an open advertising approach or a closed one. With the open approach, you create the content yourself and then distribute it across several media platforms. With the closed approach, you create an account on a single platform and offer up your advertising in the same way that anybody else makes a post.

Remember, if you are specifically targeting mobile users, the stream is their whole experience, because of the smaller screen size. This can mean that native advertising is your only option.

How to Do Native Ads the Right Way

Native advertisingcontent must never be sales-oriented. Instead, it should be educational, interesting, or helpful. Nobody wants to read about your company’s products or services. Additionally, it’s very important that you clearly identify your ad as an ad, even if you do so in an understated and unobtrusive way. A simple word like “sponsored” or “promoted” is all that it takes.

The Takeaway

You have a better chance of finding a winning lottery ticket than you do of getting sales through a banner ad. Native advertising, with its subtle look, is a much better bet. Your company can greatly benefit from adding native advertising to its marketing strategy.