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In the following native advertising guide, you will find everything you need to know about Native Advertising, including what it is, how native ads look like, the best native advertising networks, and how to make it work for you by starting and managing campaigns.
Through native advertising, you can offer visitors relevant content at the right times. Gone are the days of seeking users out and forcing them to witness an ad that may or may not be relevant to them.
You are getting this Native Advertising guide for free, and I am sure it’s much better than those paid products.
When you are highly skilled and experienced, you can make get great results by using native advertising.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
- 1 1. What is native advertising?
- 2 2. Native Advertising Statistics
- 3 3. Basic Native Ads Terminology
- 4 4. Types of Native advertising & Examples
- 5 5. Native Ads PROs and CONs
- 6 6. Native advertising Goals
- 7 7. Native advertising Challenges
- 8 8. Top 6 Native Advertising Platforms
- 9 9. How to Choose a Native Advertising Platform
- 10 10. Native Advertising Best Practices
- 11 11. Native advertising Takeaways
- 12 Conclusion
1. What is native advertising?
Native advertising is an online marketing method using paid ads that match the website’s look and fit seamlessly into the surrounding content.
It lets you target a highly relevant audience and display your content to people interested in your product or service. Both their authenticity and non-intrusive nature make users enjoy quality native ads.
You face native ads whenever you surf the Internet. You might even fail to notice you encounter them. But you do. You find them in your social media feeds, your favorite blog or your Youtube channel.
In most cases, when we talk about native advertising, we refer to content recommendations widely spread across websites, especially blogs and magazines. However, in-feed ads promoted listings, and paid search ads are also considered types of native advertising.
The secret to Native Advertising is that it is non-disruptive, which exposes the user to advertising content without trying so hard.
Before going further with our native advertising guide, let’s review some native advertising stats.
2. Native Advertising Statistics
According to a survey conducted by Sharethrough, native ads drive more attention and brand lift over traditional displays.
2.1 Native Advertising Performance Stats
- Consumers looked at Native Ads 53% more frequently than display ads.
- 25% more consumers were measured to look at in-feed Native Ad placements than display ad units.
- Native Ads registered an 18% higher lift in purchase intent and a 9% lift in brand affinity responses than banner ads.
- 32% of respondents said a Native Ad “is an ad I would share with a friend or a family member” versus just 19% for display ads.
Now, let’s talk about some not-so-great stats about native advertising. According to Copyblogger, state of native advertising report, there is still room to grow and some issues that publishers and advertisers face:
2.2 Native Advertising Acceptance Stats
- 49% of consumers don’t know what Native Advertising is.
- 51% of consumers are skeptical about Native Advertising.
- 41% of publishers offer Native Advertising as an advertising or service option.
- Only 19% of publishers said that their work consists of Native Advertising.
As you can see, these contrasting stats make Native Advertising a little controversial. Advertisers love Native Ads because the click-through rate (CTR) is much higher than regular ads. Also, engagement is usually much stronger with Native Ads.
Now that you have a basic understanding of native advertising, it’s time to get your hands dirty and learn some technical aspects. You will need them when we discuss native ads networks and their best practices.
3. Basic Native Ads Terminology
Here are the terms that you should need to know about native advertising:
- Native advertising – Native advertising uses paid ads that match the look, feel, and function of the media format in which they appear. Unlike display ads or banner ads, native ads don’t look like ads. They look like part of the editorial flow of the page. The key to native advertising is that it is non-disruptive – it exposes the reader to advertising content without sticking out like a sore thumb.
- Ad network – An intermediary that connects advertisers with websites that host ads and coordinate ad campaigns.
- Bid – The maximum amount of money the advertiser is ready to pay for an ad to be displayed or clicked on (it depends on the bidding model).
- Content recommendations – Content pieces, such as blog posts, news articles, or landing pages, are suggested to users on the site they visit.
- Content discovery platform – Content Discovery platforms display the sponsored content on widgets placed below or beside editorial content on publisher websites. Using algorithms that help predict what users may like, these platforms deliver personalized recommendations for every reader.
- CPC bidding – Cost-per-click bidding model means that an advertiser will pay for each click on their ad. CPC may vary as the final price is set during the auction, but it won’t exceed the bid set.
- CPM bidding – Cost-per-mille, or cost-per-thousand, is the bidding model where an advertiser pays for impressions. The term denotes the price of 1,000 impressions on one webpage.
4. Types of Native advertising & Examples
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the primary organization responsible for developing ad industry standards and conducting business research, published a report in 2013 detailing six categories for differentiating types of native advertisements.
But there’s no single classification of native ads, as their formats constantly evolve. We identify several major types of a native ad, which you can see below:
- “Advertisement” or “AD” for Google and YouTube.
- “Promoted” or “Promoted by [brand]” for Twitter.
- “Sponsored” or “Sponsored by [brand]” or “Sponsored Content” for LinkedIn and Yahoo.
- “Presented by [brand]” + “Featured Partner” tag for BuzzFeed and Huffington Post.
- “Suggested Post” + a “Sponsored” tag for Facebook.
4.2 Search Ads
Appearing in the search results list, these are generally found above or below the organic search results or in a favorable position, having been sold to advertisers to guarantee optimal placement on the search engine page.
They usually appear identical to other results on the page except for disclosure aspects.
4.3 Promoted listings
Native promoted listings are ads that appear on e-commerce websites on search. Most of the time, these appear at the top of your search but necessarily.
- Sponsored
- Sponsored listing
- Promoted
4.4 Content Recommendation Widgets
Recommended content remains a dominant native ad format. Content recommendation widgets are the units you see below or next to articles on the publishers’ websites.
These units are non-intrusive and don’t disrupt the user experience displayed within the editorial content recommendations.
These recommendation widgets are often placed on premium websites, including The Guardian, HuffPost, NBC News, CNN, Daily Telegraph, and more. Publishers often rely on content discovery networks to promote their content on their websites.
To show the most relevant content recommendations, content discovery platforms, such as Taboola or Outbrain, compare individual audience profiles against the targeting options advertisers set and customize widgets for every user.
Today, content discovery platforms offer advertisers many targeting options, allowing them to reach the right audiences at the right time.
Content Recommendation Widget Ads contain up to three disclosure signals.
Custom Content Units involve ad examples that don’t fit into one of the above Native Ad types. Or, as in the case of custom playlists, they are too platform-specific to warrant their category but need to be on a marketer’s radar as native advertising options.
4.6 Sponsored blog posts
Sponsored articles are a native opportunity offered by large and small media companies through their blogging partnership platform. Check, for instance, Forbes’ BrandVoice. Published on a co-branded site page, these efforts are designed to appear more like collaborative, ongoing thought leadership than one-shot promotional spots.
With sponsored blog posts, you access a new audience, write and present the information in a way they are used to get it, leverage the publisher’s brand and trust, and generate sales and exposure. At the same time, you educate the readers in no intrusive way.
5. Native Ads PROs and CONs
Now that you know what native advertising is, how native ads look, and how they work, let’s talk about the PROs and CONs.
Native Advertising PROs
- Better customer targeting.
- Less Expensive.
- Bypasses Ad Blind Customers.
- Bypass Adblockers.
- If done right, it can enhance the Content.
Native Advertising CONs
- It Can Seem Deceptive to visitors.
- Publishers Receive Backlash in traffic figures.
- Google may Penalize native ads if done wrong.
Before moving forward, let me clarify something about Google’s penalties. As you may know, Google is against deceptive and intrusive ads. Also doesn’t allow sponsored posts without proper markup. This being said, If publishers follow the Google rules regarding sponsored content, the FTC recommendations (don’t overcharge the website with ads, and mark them) should be safe from a Google penalty regarding ads and sponsored posts.
6. Native advertising Goals
6.1. Build brand awareness
Brand awareness is about establishing a robust online presence for your brand. Many brands leverage native advertising to achieve brand awareness goals. They display their articles and videos on the world’s most popular websites and reach wide but highly relevant audiences.
6.2. Attract leads
Native advertising has already proved extremely useful for reaching your performance marketing goals and increasing purchase intent.
It allows you to attract leads by driving your readers to complete specific actions, such as downloading your application, signing up for a newsletter, or connecting your prospect with your brand.
6.3. Drive sales
Advertisers aim at driving direct sales less frequently than building brand awareness or increasing engagements, but it doesn’t mean the contribution of native advertising to the sales process isn’t significant.
Still, it’s unlikely that someone will make a purchase when seeing your sponsored content for the first time. That’s why campaigns aimed at driving sales are more likely to be successful when you’re targeting people who are most interested in buying your products, e.g., retargeting your website visitors.
6.4. Strengthen Customer Loyalty
Besides building brand awareness or driving sales, native advertising is your chance to create a relationship that builds trust and loyalty.
Due to their form, native ads don’t necessarily make a pitch for a product or service. Customers appreciate meaningful content created to provide real value rather than make money.
7. Native advertising Challenges
7.1 Native advertising takes time.
Undoubtedly, native advertising is a powerful online marketing method, but you must do it right to leverage its full potential. To attract your audience’s attention and convert them into customers, your native ads should truly stand out from the crowd.
Without relevant experience, creating a genuine native ad can be challenging and takes time.
7.2 It isn’t easy to take your pick among multiple options.
When you finally invest in native advertising, you must choose the right platform to help you achieve your marketing goals. There’s no shortage of native advertising companies, and it hardly makes a choice easier.
When you start with paid search campaigns, you go to Google Ads; when you advertise on social media, you go with Facebook, Instagram, etc. But what are the best native ad networks to go with? How many platforms should you use to expand your reach? Is a specific network better suited for your industry or business? These are just a few questions advertisers face entering native advertising.
7.3 Measuring native ads’ performance can be troublesome.
Does native advertising work for you? Do you know which metrics you should track? Measuring ROI is still a problem for many brands. Native advertising performance can often be challenging to measure, especially when you run several campaigns.
Now that you know the benefits of native advertising, let’s take one step forward and see some of the best native advertising networks you can use to advertise your content.
8. Top 6 Native Advertising Platforms
There are many popular native ad networks that you can use to advertise your business.
This list of the five best native ad platforms will be useful when you’re aiming to get your ads out there and generate leads and, ultimately, sales.
1. AdStyle
AdStyle Specs:
- Founded In: 2015
- Reach: 40 billion monthly ad impressions.
- Pricing: Advertisers can start with just $500.
- Ad specs: Native, In-Content, Banner, On-scroll, Discover
- Social Media Profiles: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, CrunchBase
AdStyle is a cutting-edge advertising network that gathers various select online marketing and publishing resources. The company opened its doors in 2015 and has developed a cutting-edge native advertising network that gathers various online marketing and publishing resources.
Their goals are to provide a dynamic and engaging content marketplace and create a community of satisfied advertisers and premium publishers from all over the globe.
Join today and grow your customer base, monetize your website, and take control of your brand.
AdStyle PROs
- High-quality publishers in over 40 languages;
- You can start with only $500;
- Auto-Optimization feature that uses a self-learning algorithm;
- Retargeting tools available;
- Great customer service;
AdStyle CONs
- Targeting is very limited; you’d have to rely on the algorithms;
- Limited details about how much traffic they can deliver per device type & country;
- Limited payment options; no cryptocurrency payment option;
2. Taboola
Taboola Specs:
- Founded In: 2007
- Reach: Taboola reaches over 1.4 billion unique users every month.
- Pricing: Users can start at $10 per day for a self-service option.
- Taboola ad specs: find them here.
- Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Crunchbase
Taboola is the world’s leading content discovery and native advertising platform that helps marketers reach over 1.4 billion unique users every month. They recommend content across the world’s top websites, such as NBC News, Daily Mail, The Weather Channel, EuroSport, Yahoo! Japan, etc.
The platform lets you fully control your campaigns – from setting your own goals to editing your daily ad delivery when the campaign is live. With Taboola, you can target your audience by Location, Device, Operating system, and Connection type.
Taboola PROs
- Many high-quality publishers like CNN, NBC News, and MSN.
- Cost-effective, compared to Google and Facebook.
- Easy to use user interface.
- Great customer service.
Taboola CONs
- The lack of performance whitelisting makes it difficult to zero in on the best traffic.
- Lack of ability to block websites in bulk
- Creative approval is arbitrary and vague when denied.
- Creative approval is quite slow.
3. Outbrain
Outbrain specs:
- Founded: 2006
- Reach: Outbrain reaches over 1.2 billion users monthly.
- Outbrain ad specs: find them here.
- Pricing: From $10 per day.
- Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Crunchbase
Outbrain is another popular content discovery platform that displays boxes of links on publishers’ websites. Their recommended content appears across top-quality placements, including CNN, Fox News, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Mashable, and even more.
The Outbrain’s ads approval team follows rigorous approval terms for advertisers (and publishers). Your ad should be highly quality and well-crafted to meet all the standards and get approved.
Recently, Outbrain announced that it would merge with Taboola and change its name.
Outbrain PROs
- Custom targeting.
- Get access to quality publishers like CNN, Times, ESPN, and more.
- Cost-effective, compared to Google and Facebook.
- Easy to use user interface.
- Great customer service.
Outbrain CONs
- The lack of performance whitelisting makes it difficult to zero in on the best traffic.
- Lack of ability to block websites in bulk.
- Hard to get approved in the beginning.
- Creative approval is quite slow.
4. MGID
MGID specs:
- Founded: 2008.
- Reach: Delivers 188 billion impressions monthly.
- MGID ad specs: find them here.
- Pricing: From $100 ($500 if you want a dedicated advertising manager).
- Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest
The next native ad platform that’s worth your attention is MGID. The company partners with 31650+ publishers worldwide, allowing advertisers to drive high volumes of diverse traffic. MGID ads are served to audiences in Europe, the USA, Asia-Pacific, Canada, and other countries.
Dynamic retargeting is also available on the platform. Although there’s no such option as interest-based targeting, MGID ensures your ads are displayed to the most relevant audiences by requiring advertisers to select the category of every offer you promote.
MGID PROs
- You can start advertising for only $100.
- Users have a lot of control over campaign management.
- It is one of the oldest native ad networks.
- You can use dynamic retargeting.
- You get great customer service, including an account manager (from $500).
MGID CONs
- The admin control panel for MGID might seem daunting for beginners.
- You may see quite a high bounce rate on their ads compared to other networks.
- Creative approval is quite slow.
5. Revcontent
RevContent specs:
- Founded: 2013.
- Reach: Delivers 188 billion impressions monthly.
- RevContent ad specs: find them here.
- Pricing: From $100.
- Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube
Revcontent is often called the top-growing native advertising platform. They provide strict requirements for both publishers and advertisers. With 250B+ recommendations per month, 97% of U.S Households, 3.0% average CTR their reach will be your chances of reach!
Due to their high-quality standards, the vast majority of traffic generated from Revcontent native ads comes from Tier 1 countries like the USA and UK.
RevContent PROs
- You can start advertising for only $100.
- Users have a lot of control over campaign management.
- Real-time performance metrics based on device type, website section, and content performance.
- You can use dynamic retargeting.
- Social algorithms, proprietary to Revcontent, would circulate its clients’ most engaging content based on key metrics, thus enhancing website page views.
RevContent CONs
- Limited with a minimum daily budget of $100.
- You can’t add more than one piece of content at a time.
- Creative approval is quite slow.
6. AdNow
AdNow Company Stats
- Network founded: 2014
- Reach: Delivers 188 billion impressions monthly.
- Adnow ad specs: find them here.
- Min deposit: $30.
- Profiles: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
AdNow is the fastest-growing ad network and has more than 160,000 partners in 114 countries. According to their stats, Adnow serves 6 billion impressions per month and shows ads to almost 1 billion unique visitors. The best part about this network is, it’s super beginner-friendly.
This native advertising network was founded in 2014 and is very popular for its native content ads! They provide PPC and CPM and their unique ads in the form of widgets, displayed as part of the content related to the content, banners, and hybrid ads!
Adnow PROs
- You can advertise on non-English sites as well.
- Get access to smaller, niched publishers you can’t have on other networks.
- Offers advanced targeting options.
- The support department is fast.
Adnow CONs
- CPC is slightly slow for non-English sites.
- Some publishers are questionable.
Would you like to know more about the Adnow Native Advertising network? Check the dedicated AdNow review or signup for an account right now.
9. How to Choose a Native Advertising Platform
When looking for the right ad platform for your company or business, you need to ensure that you consider all factors, including your website traffic, company advertising budget, nature of media or content you want to serve, and network type you are looking for.
Here are some of the factors to consider when you choose a native advertising platform:
Setup Procedure
Ensure that the ad network you are going with offers the right setup procedure. For example, there are networks like Media.net that will require you to set up each website manually. Not to mention, each website will require separate approval from the network, making it a tedious and time-consuming process for advertisers.
Pricing Model
Advertisers must also ensure that per-click pricing is adequate according to their marketing budget. There can be different pricing models, including CPC and CPM. However, not all networks offer all of the pricing options. For instance, Outbrain doesn’t have support for the CPC model.
Quality of Ad
Although advertising networks can acquire ads to meet your native ad impressions, you must remember that ad quality can vary quite a bit. Some fraudulent advertisers use these networks for traffic arbitrating purposes, which could take your visitors to fake landing pages. That’s why you must review the quality of the ads being served.
Ad Network Requirements
Review your stats and numbers before you make a final decision about choosing an ad network. Ensure that you have enough traffic, budget, and access to features you need before signing up for a big-name ad platform.
10. Native Advertising Best Practices
Targeting
According to eMarketer, 88% of native ads were served to mobile devices in 2020. If that’s not the case to join in on that trend, we don’t know what is.
Your choice of targeting options will depend on the goal you set.
Go with the basic targeting options to reach more people and build brand awareness. Exclude irrelevant audiences by configuring audience locations, device types, or interests.
Split your campaigns by variables to tailor campaign content for different audiences and see which demographics you should focus on. Later, when your campaign is live for some time, you can check out how it performs on different websites and exclude the least productive ones.
If aimed at lead acquisition, advertisers opt for retargeting or creating lookalike audiences – mind that the second option is available for US-based audiences only. If you target audiences from other countries, you’d better go with basic targeting options and optimize those that deliver the best performance.
Are you aiming to drive sales? Customers are 43% more likely to convert when they’re retargeted. Targeting users who have previously interacted with your ads or specific web pages is exceptionally effective.
Ad Creatives
Creatives are essential, but sometimes they are underrated by marketers. First, be careful with using photo-stock images. They are the easiest ones to get, but many other companies use these images simultaneously.
Whether native advertising will be effective for you highly depends on your ad’s appearance. The image is the first thing users see. Use high-quality and eye-catching thumbnails to get noticed.
We recommend you test many combinations of titles and thumbnails in your campaigns for better results.
Account manager
If you’re spending more than $1,000 per day, ask to speak with a managed account rep. They can offer additional targeting settings on the back end, like age ranges, retargeting, and additional audience segments.
11. Native advertising Takeaways
Native advertising is the future and represents a good alternative to display networks. That’s because visitors are sick and tired of seeing intrusive, non-related ads, so they become “ad blind. That’s why adblocker apps are getting more and more popular. In fact, in 2018, Google turned on the adblocker by default in the Chrome browser.
As an advertiser, you should use native advertising to build brand awareness, attract leads, drive sales, and strengthen customer loyalty. However, remember that native advertising takes time to bring quality leads, as the advertising networks must find the best publishers for your ads. Measuring native ads’ performance can be quite troublesome.
There are many native advertising networks, but we selected the top 6 for you: AdStyle, Taboola, Outbrain, MGID, RevContent, and AdNow. These networks allow you to access many publishers, from niched, smaller ones to big names like CNN, Forbes, and MSN.
Further readings:
- 19 Amazing Native Advertising Ad Examples – Adespresso.com
- Great Native Advertising Examples – Joinative.com
- Best 21 Advertising Networks For Publishers in 2021 – Monetize.info
Conclusion
There you have it: our complete native advertising guide. You’ve learned what native advertising is, the most common native ads, and the PROs and CONs. We’ve shown you the top 6 native advertising networks and the best practices to start your 1st campaign.
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Businesses are gravitating towards native advertising because of its ability to catch consumers’ attention and entice engagement. What’s your opinion? Is Native advertising simply a fantastic business opportunity, or is it unethical and intrusive?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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