Native Advertising, Simply Put.
A simple & 5 min read into what native advertising is and why it’s the latest trend for those looking to sell more and grow their business.
This article has three main parts to describing native advertising:
What it is. How it Works. The Money part.
What is it?
To jump right into it, native advertising is a “non-disruptive” way to sell your products or services by reaching people who are more likely interested in engaging with your advertisement. You have a business idea, a product or service, you’re a small firm or a large well-established business, in any case, you want to sell more, strengthen your market position, increase your brand awareness and ultimately, grow.
Historically, advertising was probably the most efficient way to do that. You want your business to reach as many people as possible, but more accurately, as many interested people as possible, and that’s what we call a qualified lead. Someone who has an interest in buying your product or signing up for your service, as well as the ability to. Even after reaching as many qualified leads as you can, you now face the harder step of converting those leads into customers, and that percentage is what we call conversion rates.
So how do you stand out? Yes, the internet has given way for advertising to reach billions of people around the globe, but the excitement of this advantage has also lead to “disruptive advertisements”. When you’re trying to watch a video on YouTube, or clicking on content you want to view, or even scrolling through an article, you’re bombarded with pop up advertisements that ‘disrupt’ your feed and dis-engages you with what you originally are trying to watch. As a result, more often than not, you probably feel annoyed and just skip the ad or try to get it out of your face as soon as you can without really giving it a chance, even if in reality, this could be a product or service you would be interested in investing it. So there’s a lot of lost opportunities for advertisers because of this.
Hence, the newest adaptation and advertising solution, native advertising.
To put it simply, instead of popping up in your face, the native method is to place ads on widgets, located somewhere on the page you’re viewing in a way that doesn’t disrupt you, on the contrary, it’s listed under “recommended for you”, or “more like this”, or even “more articles you might be interested in”. The point is, your product is now given a fair chance to actually be viewed. Then comes the targeting bonus. If you’re selling a beauty product or service for example, advertising it on a fashion or cosmetics website would usually mean that the millions of viewers going to that website on their own, are probably people who already have an interest towards your content, apply this to anything. At the core of it, native advertising is a way of advertising your product so that it looks like a part of the page you’re viewing it on. Yes, it’s a paid advertisement, but it doesn’t look like that because the widgets and the content advertised in those widgets are both relevant to the platform, as well as designed to blend in with the look and feel of it.
With this, you:
1) Reach millions of viewers every month.
2) Know they are potentially interested since your product is placed on a relevant platform that they are visiting from their own accord.
3) Give your product a chance to be considered because it does not disrupt them, knowing that they freely chose to learn more about you.
Great, so now you know what it is, here’s how it works.
First off, you have to define your target audience, the more accurate the better. Then you need to start creating attractive visuals (picture of video) and come up with engaging captions and titles that also blend in with your product and the platform. After that, its important to link your ad to an aesthetically pleasing and engaging landing page that has all the information a qualified customer needs, as well as a Call to Action (CTA) or submission form to fill out, and a way to reach you. Try to keep it short, sweet and effective.
But how is all this financed? This is the money part.
Basically, publishers agree to have a third party (such as a native ad agency like Speakol) include widgets on their platform, be it a website or application. These widgets contain the ads that you create, whenever a viewer clicks on an ad for example, the publisher receives a certain fee. We’re talking cents, but imagine the thousands of clicks that happen, these cents add up pretty quick and pretty fast to very large numbers. This is what we call Cost per Click (CPC) and is more relevant when you’re goal is to drive conversion rates by having people directed to your linked landing page.
There are other metrics and ways of financing it, such as Cost per Impression (CPM), charged based on how many times your ad was viewed, if your goal is brand awareness. Cost per View (CPV), is you’re launching a video ad and have a goal of wanting your video ad viewed by as many people as possible. As well as Cost per Lead (CPL). Of course, your money comes from your increased sales (and hence, revenue) when these qualified leads are converted into customers, helping you increase your return on investment (ROI) from paying money to launch these ad campaigns.
Account Managers at Speakol are always available to help guide you on best practices, from how to make your ads more engaging, to how to optimize your spending and budget, as well as how to target your ads to the right people, making sure you’re return, is always higher than your investment.
In a new age of advertising, companies all over the world are realizing the value of native advertising, you’ve already been subjected to it by companies such as Facebook or Google, and you might not even be aware of it, & that’s the beauty in it.
So, does all this sound interesting to you? If so, then jump onto the latest advertising solution and join Speakol, the leading AdTech company in the MENA region for native advertising and content recommendation. With the most extensive and premium publishers network in the region, expanding to over 400 websites and applications, we’ll make sure your business starts seeing the growth it deserves, targeting any country or industry you need. With partners and advertisers from every country, industry and background there is.
What are you waiting for? Don’t believe it?
