Say goodbye to the stigma associated with native advertising.
Following
The New York Times’ official embrace of the once-controversial ad format, J.P. Morgan is
predicting that native will take over digital channels in 2014.
“We believe native ads are quickly becoming the de facto ad format on mobile and increasingly moving into
desktop,” lead analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in J.P. Morgan’s annual “Nothing But Net” report, released on Thursday.
It is significant that Anmuth and his
colleagues are tying the success of native to mobile, considering that they expect ad dollars devoted to the channel to overtake desktop dollars this year.
As for what makes native
ads so special, J.P. Morgan calculates that they deliver a huge bang for the buck. Indeed, according to the securities firm, native ads represented just 5%-to-10% of Facebook’s impressions in
2013, but accounted for more than 60% of the company’s revenue.
“We think native ads also have significantly higher click-through rates than traditional display ads, which
leads to higher pricing over time,” according to Anmuth.
But, what makes native so well-suited for the mobile medium? “Native ads are ads embedded in a [Facebook] NewsFeed
or [Twitter] stream and in many cases closely resemble organic content, making them much more likely to get clicked on compared to historical banner display ads,” according to Anmuth and his
team.
As a result, “we believe a growing interest in mobile advertising from brand advertisers coupled with improving mobile ad formats suited for smaller screen sizes should
help to bridge the gap between time spent on mobile and mobile marketing spend.”
Moreover, “while the majority of Facebook and Twitter ad revenue is now generated through
native or feed ads, we believe other publishers, such as LinkedIn and Yahoo, are also increasingly shifting inventory to the format.”
Last year, eMarketer predicted that the
native niche would hit $2.85 billion by 2014. Yet industry thought leaders have implored publishers and brands to rethink their use of native advertising.
“Publishers should say
‘no,’ more than ‘yes’ to native,” Steve Rubel, executive vice president of global strategy and insights at Edelman, told attendees an the OMMA Native conference, in
November. “As an industry, we’re going way too fast.”
Been saying this all along, with one qualification - native ads will dominate 2014, but particularly on mobile. Look at what Airpush, MoPub and others are doing with native ads on mobile. The market potential here is insane... http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/10/airpush-acquires-hubbl-for-15-million-to-bring-native-ads-to-mobile/
"Native Advertising" will end up being the surest way to disengage viewers and readers from a web site or blog. Give it about another year or 18 months before it reaches the tipping point.
Please stop using the NY Times Dell execution as an example of some kind of fabulous "native" advertising format. It's a mini-site, with sponsored content and curated articles. The only way a reader gets to it is to click on a co-branded banner. This is NOTHING NEW!! We did this all the time when I was at WSJ 6-7 years ago...so did NYT. Now it's "native"...wow!
Good info on Native. My article from April also has some great insight on Native and custom content which comes in various flavors:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/199237/travel-like-a-native-advertiser.html
J.P. Morgan likes Native for the return to the publishers, not for the effectiveness. Right now, they resemble organic content in the manner of an outsider butting into a party conversation with barely relevant information (kind of like a bad insurance salesman). It's as likely to make you walk away as engage. If we're measuring success by a click-through, we're doing advertisers a disservice. It seems the emperor has a lot of new clothes these days.
Horrible misnomer. There is nothing native about it. It is propaganda advertising. It is deliberately written, planned, edited and executed. Can it be informative and entertaining ? Sure ! But hiding an advocacy as news is propaganda. The name itself to explain itself is propaganda.