 "Cutting through the noise")
Last December, Google released a study that showed 60 per cent of online ad impressions are overlooked by consumers. On an average, a user is served with 1,700 banner ads per month leading to, what analysts have started to refer as banner blindness. Today, the average display ad click-through rate (CTR) is 0.1 per cent. The reason behind this is the lack of engaging content in traditional display. Given this, many see native advertising as a long-term solution for this problem.
Since the concept is fairly new to India, there is very little data available on the size of the native advertising market. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), 70 per cent of consumers prefer to learn about products through native advertising versus traditional advertising formats. Globally, native ad spending will climb from $3.2 billion in 2014 to $8.8 billion by 2018, largely because advertisers are seeing above average engagement with this format, according to an eMarketer forecast.
The possibility of pushing the envelope without discounting the user experience is exciting no doubt. While big advertisers such as Hindustan Unilever, Samsung, Olx, Amazon and Flipkart are betting sizeable budgets on native advertising, some others are still at the experiment stage. The good thing about native advertising is that it produces CTRs like that of editorial content, without compromising on user experience. Publishers such as Yahoo!, Mashable, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes offer native ad options to advertisers. Branded videos, sponsored posts, infographics, blogposts, sponsored portals and branded applications are some of the content opportunities advertisers can explore.
Besides, there are platforms such as ScoopWhoop (a Buzzfeed-like platform) and The Logical Indian that are redefining storytelling by creating sponsored stories for advertisers. PepsiCo, for instance, has invested in ScoopWhoop's sponsored stories. And it does not come cheap. While ScoopWhoop charges around Rs 1.5 lakh for creating a story, The Logical Indian does the same at Rs 75,000. Both amplify this content across other social media platforms.
Zafar Rais, CEO of digital agency MindShift Interactive, says 70 per cent of the CTR in native advertising currently comes from mobile. The agency is responsible for creating native ad campaigns for health care services discovery platform Practo. Recently, after launching its first brand campaign, Practo ran a couple of native ad campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. The target group was people in the 25 to 45 year age group. If the data shared by the agency is anything to go by, Practo's native advertising campaigns had CTRs upwards of 4.2.
California-based social network LinkedIn forayed into native advertising in 2013 with sponsored updates, its fastest growing product today. Based on the interest of a user, the updates marked as 'sponsored' appear in her newsfeed. LinkedIn provides intelligence to advertisers on content that interests various target groups. With Sponsored Updates, marketers are able to distribute content directly to relevant professionals. Says Ashutosh Gupta, director, marketing solutions, LinkedIn, "If content is king, context is queen. User experience is sacrosanct to us."
To begin with, an advertiser using Sponsored Updates must have a company page on the network. Say, a company wants to target CIOs with the objective of selling its solutions. Through Sponsored Updates the advertiser will initiate the conversation by talking about how cloud can change the way companies do business. This is upper funnel content. In the next leg of communication, the advertiser will move further by talking about the significance of cloud computing in context of her target's business. Finally, after engaging with the consumer for some time, the advertiser can push specialised content (a whitepaper) or invite her target consumer for an event. The effectiveness of Sponsored Updates can be measured by assessing the CTRs and social actions (likes, share and comments).
Professional certification courses provider simplilearn spends a third of its media budget on native advertising. Chief Product and Marketing Officer Kashyap Dalal explains that in the education category the need to push relevant content is even more pressing. The company mainly sells certified courses to professionals who come from industries with constant reskilling requirements. Recently Simplilearn ran a native ad campaign on Linkedin to push one of its big data certification courses targeting senior software engineers. After zeroing in on the target group on the platform, the company built engagement by sharing content that it thought would be relevant to its target. So its Sponsored Updates featured interesting facts and figures about the big data job market-such as, the total number of vacancies to come in the recent future, existing skill gaps, data points and infographics on average salary at certain designations.
Simplilearn also retargeted its audience with display ads and content syndication platforms like Taboola and Outbrain as they went from Linkedin to other websites. Over a period of 15 days, the company achieved a CTR of 2.4. Says Dalal, "Native advertising is less about making the right real-time bids and more about controlling the quality of your content."
So if you are targeting the new-age consumer, who tend to be put off by "salesy" or push content, consider native advertising. Now that publishers are partnering with advertisers in the production process and helping them compose and edit the content, it has just become easier to catch the attention of your target and gently nudge them to take a decision in your favour.
Expert take
Our experience has given us insights on how to drive up the effectiveness of a native ad campaign.
Aligned objectives: Users are more likely to respond to native ads when the ad content is meaningful. They find ads far less intrusive if the content is informative and interesting. We have a good example of this on one of our digital magazines Yahoo! Food, where 52 per cent of our users said that promoted advertising content helped them learn more about cooking. Making the ad a part of the content experience by keeping in mind what an audience expects in a certain context, is one of the most important ways to make native ads more effective.
Unclutter your messaging: At times, campaigns are expected to deliver more than one objective. For example, driving brand preference and sales performance. Since the success of native ads is also driven by the relevance of the content, it is always more effective to split the campaign along the lines of the objectives. One campaign could be brand messaging showcased in certain content, while the other could be built around discounts surfacing in a different context. Together, the two campaigns are likely to deliver more effectively, rather than a bundled approach which runs the risk of creating clutter.
Effective integration: A native ad works best when the format of the ad is the same as the associated content on the page. Similarly, ads need to fit into context experiences and be seamless and consistent across devices. Taking into account cross-device usage is important to deliver a consistent content-ad experience to the user.
Let the creative juices flow: The right kind of creative content is important for any form of advertising and the story is no different for native ads. A native ad works better when it fits seamlessly into the content it is immersed in, and at the same time, stands out with a compelling message. For instance, a catchy headline draws user attention, having multiple creatives help break the monotony and drives greater engagement.
Be transparent: Native ads are not about ads masquerading as editorial content. Since native ads are mapped to the context, being transparent is important to retain the user trust and engagement.
Gurmit Singh,
VP & MD, Yahoo! India
Since the concept is fairly new to India, there is very little data available on the size of the native advertising market. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), 70 per cent of consumers prefer to learn about products through native advertising versus traditional advertising formats. Globally, native ad spending will climb from $3.2 billion in 2014 to $8.8 billion by 2018, largely because advertisers are seeing above average engagement with this format, according to an eMarketer forecast.
The possibility of pushing the envelope without discounting the user experience is exciting no doubt. While big advertisers such as Hindustan Unilever, Samsung, Olx, Amazon and Flipkart are betting sizeable budgets on native advertising, some others are still at the experiment stage. The good thing about native advertising is that it produces CTRs like that of editorial content, without compromising on user experience. Publishers such as Yahoo!, Mashable, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes offer native ad options to advertisers. Branded videos, sponsored posts, infographics, blogposts, sponsored portals and branded applications are some of the content opportunities advertisers can explore.
Besides, there are platforms such as ScoopWhoop (a Buzzfeed-like platform) and The Logical Indian that are redefining storytelling by creating sponsored stories for advertisers. PepsiCo, for instance, has invested in ScoopWhoop's sponsored stories. And it does not come cheap. While ScoopWhoop charges around Rs 1.5 lakh for creating a story, The Logical Indian does the same at Rs 75,000. Both amplify this content across other social media platforms.
Zafar Rais, CEO of digital agency MindShift Interactive, says 70 per cent of the CTR in native advertising currently comes from mobile. The agency is responsible for creating native ad campaigns for health care services discovery platform Practo. Recently, after launching its first brand campaign, Practo ran a couple of native ad campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. The target group was people in the 25 to 45 year age group. If the data shared by the agency is anything to go by, Practo's native advertising campaigns had CTRs upwards of 4.2.
California-based social network LinkedIn forayed into native advertising in 2013 with sponsored updates, its fastest growing product today. Based on the interest of a user, the updates marked as 'sponsored' appear in her newsfeed. LinkedIn provides intelligence to advertisers on content that interests various target groups. With Sponsored Updates, marketers are able to distribute content directly to relevant professionals. Says Ashutosh Gupta, director, marketing solutions, LinkedIn, "If content is king, context is queen. User experience is sacrosanct to us."
To begin with, an advertiser using Sponsored Updates must have a company page on the network. Say, a company wants to target CIOs with the objective of selling its solutions. Through Sponsored Updates the advertiser will initiate the conversation by talking about how cloud can change the way companies do business. This is upper funnel content. In the next leg of communication, the advertiser will move further by talking about the significance of cloud computing in context of her target's business. Finally, after engaging with the consumer for some time, the advertiser can push specialised content (a whitepaper) or invite her target consumer for an event. The effectiveness of Sponsored Updates can be measured by assessing the CTRs and social actions (likes, share and comments).
Professional certification courses provider simplilearn spends a third of its media budget on native advertising. Chief Product and Marketing Officer Kashyap Dalal explains that in the education category the need to push relevant content is even more pressing. The company mainly sells certified courses to professionals who come from industries with constant reskilling requirements. Recently Simplilearn ran a native ad campaign on Linkedin to push one of its big data certification courses targeting senior software engineers. After zeroing in on the target group on the platform, the company built engagement by sharing content that it thought would be relevant to its target. So its Sponsored Updates featured interesting facts and figures about the big data job market-such as, the total number of vacancies to come in the recent future, existing skill gaps, data points and infographics on average salary at certain designations.
Simplilearn also retargeted its audience with display ads and content syndication platforms like Taboola and Outbrain as they went from Linkedin to other websites. Over a period of 15 days, the company achieved a CTR of 2.4. Says Dalal, "Native advertising is less about making the right real-time bids and more about controlling the quality of your content."
So if you are targeting the new-age consumer, who tend to be put off by "salesy" or push content, consider native advertising. Now that publishers are partnering with advertisers in the production process and helping them compose and edit the content, it has just become easier to catch the attention of your target and gently nudge them to take a decision in your favour.
Gurmit Singh
Expert take
Our experience has given us insights on how to drive up the effectiveness of a native ad campaign.
Aligned objectives: Users are more likely to respond to native ads when the ad content is meaningful. They find ads far less intrusive if the content is informative and interesting. We have a good example of this on one of our digital magazines Yahoo! Food, where 52 per cent of our users said that promoted advertising content helped them learn more about cooking. Making the ad a part of the content experience by keeping in mind what an audience expects in a certain context, is one of the most important ways to make native ads more effective.
Unclutter your messaging: At times, campaigns are expected to deliver more than one objective. For example, driving brand preference and sales performance. Since the success of native ads is also driven by the relevance of the content, it is always more effective to split the campaign along the lines of the objectives. One campaign could be brand messaging showcased in certain content, while the other could be built around discounts surfacing in a different context. Together, the two campaigns are likely to deliver more effectively, rather than a bundled approach which runs the risk of creating clutter.
Effective integration: A native ad works best when the format of the ad is the same as the associated content on the page. Similarly, ads need to fit into context experiences and be seamless and consistent across devices. Taking into account cross-device usage is important to deliver a consistent content-ad experience to the user.
Let the creative juices flow: The right kind of creative content is important for any form of advertising and the story is no different for native ads. A native ad works better when it fits seamlessly into the content it is immersed in, and at the same time, stands out with a compelling message. For instance, a catchy headline draws user attention, having multiple creatives help break the monotony and drives greater engagement.
Be transparent: Native ads are not about ads masquerading as editorial content. Since native ads are mapped to the context, being transparent is important to retain the user trust and engagement.
Gurmit Singh,
VP & MD, Yahoo! India