Native Advertising: Buzzword or Breakthrough?

April 7, 2013 Blogging Guide

The 2013 world of marketing and advertising is a brave new world for brands, an environment that is more and more shaped by consumer feedback and the rise of the online medium. The game has changed considerably since the days of simple, straightforward solutions like outdoor banners and tv ads. Today’s marketing is heavily reliant on social media, viral campaigns and other new media tools and practices. The audience, however is becoming jaded and increasingly indifferent to older advertising techniques. Case in point: banner ads. While banner ads had a click through rate of 9% in 2000 nowadays the rate is 0.2%, mostly misclicks and ‘forced’ clicks on disreputable sites. Audiences are losing their interest in social media marketing as well, particularly poorly conceived social media pushes, which is a big problem for a large branch of the industry.

What is working though? Content. As always, content is king but the public’s taste for content is changing as well. Professionally written content, savvy consumer reviews and direct marketing from trusted sources (friends or family members) seem to still be quite trusted sources. And there is a new advertising strategy working its way into marketing circles: Native Advertising. Native Advertising is a marketing solution that aims to provide enjoyable and valuable branded content to the user directly in his social media stream. The key words there are valuable and content in that the content provided must be directly of interest to the audience rather than a purely promotional piece of content. So far the most common types of native advertising are sponsored and promoted posts but as the trend grows other forms of content are bound to see a bigger presence. Sponsored videos, for instance, have long been a part of Google’s marketing campaigns and have always found a great audience, generally because they present the inspirational stories of people who made it through willpower, hard work and the internet.

You don’t have to use ‘feel good’ stories to elicit a response nor do you have to spend a lot of money on sponsored videos. What you do have to do, however is promote good content that  your followers finds entertaining, be it a joke tweet  or a systematic picture campaign highlighting your brand discreetly. Oreos for instance,  have had a flawless native advertising campaign through their picture-a-day recurring feature that highlights significant moments that happened on that day in history or highly viral events from that day. When the Superbowl blackout happened Oreos responded almost instantly and got highly positive feedback from followers and the media both.

As consumers become more ad-savvy and jaded towards traditional advertising there is an increased demand for fresh approaches to marketing. Native advertising brings just that and can propel your brand into the spotlight overnight.

Paul is a Social Media marketing expert who likes to spend time on DNA agency website in New York. He is passionate about Social Media and SEO and always on the cutting edge of the business