Understanding the Principles of Native Advertising
You may come across the term ‘Native Advertising’ and you may wonder what it is. Is it another form of advertising? What does it have to do with me? Native advertising is a type of advertising that is growing in size and numbers and it’s done in such a way it doesn’t intrude the user’s experience. Native Advertising is all about content and the context that surrounds it.
Native advertising is everywhere; Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and even BuzzFeed (especially the latter) has strong elements of Native Advertising. According to flipthemedia.com, Native advertising is a an undisguised form of advertising that many people would like to read, comment and share.
Examples of the advertising can be seen in Facebook. The social media site allows anybody to promote posts or stories to friends, page followers directly into their feeds. Twitter offers the same mechanic as Facebook.
See the “Promoted” yellow arrow there? When scrolling through your Twitter feed, you’ll be stumbling upon tweets, which in this case, is the original content. Just like any other tweets, you can simply engage with it, retweet, favorite it or become friends with the user.
Due to the the increased amount of ad awareness this year (and possibly the next), many businesses are finding ways to catch the user’s attention and traditional ads are getting dull, and fast. Many people (like myself) tend to overlook ads simply because they’re annoying and it doesn’t relate to my interests. However, with the addition of Native advertising, the ads shown in my feeds, regardless of website/social platform, to cater to my interest and I can interact with them directly. It’s a smart way of advertising, though. Many people who are exposed to Native advertising have a higher probability to click, engage with the ads and purchased the advertised item/service.
You see, there is nothing special with these ads; they will appear normally on a website or in your feeds alongside the other stuff you see daily. They’re purposely done in a less intrusive way.
To better understand the purpose and impacts of Native advertising, check out this awesome infographic by Mashable.com
