HMV Actis

• Apr 1, 2020, 2:00:00 PM

Native advertising: what and why?

To start off with: what is native advertising? Native advertising is a sort of advertising, usually online but sometimes also on paper, that looks and functions like a 'normal' item on the platform is it displayed on. It's an advertisement that usually appears in the shape of an article or a news video.  

 

Native advertising is being used by more and more companies lately. The reason for this is that this form of advertising works way more effective than banners or pop-ups. These usually get blocked by ad-blockers, which lots of people have at the moment. Because of the editorial content of the native advertising articles they usually bypass the ad-blockers and therefore will be seen by people.  

There are different kinds of native marketing: 

 

• Native content: this is an editorial that meets the informational needs of the reader. This is purely about being present on a website. It shouldn't be possible to spot the difference between native content and editorial content.  
• Sponsored content: this is a paid form of marketing. The article creates a link to an external organization, the one who paid for the content. The disadvantage of this form could be that there's usually stated that it's sponsored. But this is purely to protect the editors, to show that they are not responsible for the content of said article.  
• Branded content: the focus here is on promoting or drawing attention to an advertiser and the brand which it is advertised.  
• Content recommendation networks: this is a more promotional form of advertising. At the bottom of the article there is a list with other interesting content pieces on both the website itself, as well as external websites.  

 

Why use native advertising? 

A lot of consumers click away pop-ups, banners, etc., because it gets in the way and they are overwhelmed by it. With native advertising you state your message to the reader in a subtle, yet effective way. This way you also integrate into the readers attentions, instead of disturbing it. Another positive feature of this type of advertising is that you can also activate people's latent (hidden) needs. in other words, people probably didn't even know they wanted something until they read the article.