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The Resurgence of Native Advertising

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Over the past many years, we've seen Native Advertising swell up and taper off several times. What happens is typically the industry creates a choke point (often seen in other forms of advertising as well) due to over abuse by those that do a terrible job of it. This results in fading popularity and effectiveness.

According to Tim Walters January 19th article, published on the Content Marketing Network, "While native advertising – a paid placement in which the ad blends in with the look and format of the surrounding content – is enjoying a major comeback."

Typically, what we've seen in the past, is a page that looks like an editorial of some type with an abundance of information and photos on the subject the person has sought out. Cool, right? There is likely a couple of images, separate from the content photos, lingering around the upper corners of the page. These are typically linked to an offer. Everything is still cool, everyone is accustomed to seeing a couple of ads or photos that are linked to an offer. Then, suddenly, the person realizes that the entire content of the page is full of links and all leading to offers of some type related to the content.

Surprised, shocked, amused, and betrayed, are many of the typical responses of some page visitors, yet Native Ads seem to "take a lickin' and keep on tickin'"! Why, because there are still a large pool of visitors that either don't care or are not affected by the intent of the publisher. When this type of page is on a site with a great reputation and the page itself (despite the ads) delivers awesome and high quality information the user has sought out, they keep coming back for more. They return, time and time again, as long as the content "kicks ass"!

Now, when a native ad fails, it's because it looks unprofessional and doesn't have the high quality content needed to successfully pull of this little stunt. This can usually be associated with marketers that are just copying pages and haven't got a clue as to what makes content marketing work.

What has happened is that two separate pools of marketers have evolved in the Native Advertising arena. One set, the successful ones, work diligently at content marketing and understand the needs of the typical user or visitor. They provide for the demand of high value information, current information, valid and provable information. The other pool of marketers are those that simple copy and mimic what they see without ever learning what continually drives the traffic, including repeat traffic.

We can all find a parallel here. This problem also plagues other forms of our ad industry. The problem is those that copy, but do not know how to duplicate.

According to industry insiders, Native Advertising is set to grow by more than 500% over the next few years. Why, the answer is in your pocket, mobile is the primary expected growth factor that is expected to push advertising to over 21 billion in the U.S. alone by 2018. That's right, mobile content marketing is at the core of this growth and marketers are just now figuring out the best structures for engineering outstanding content marketing for delivery to your phones and these are the advanced, bleeding edge, and responsible marketers that will be serving up incredible and valuable Native Ads to the "on the go" crowds across the globe.

If you are into mobile, and you are not establishing your skills and deployments of highly valuable content to hold your native ads, then you will be falling dramatically behind the best of the best when it comes to delivering offers in a smooth and reliable format.

I have been falling behind myself when it comes to mobile. Most of the mobile I've indulged has been for my real estate clients, agents and brokers. I've been doing content marketing for myself all along, but never geared much of it to mobile. However, beginning immediately, I am changing all of that. For the rest of 2016, and the foreseeable years to come, my focus is on Mobile Content Marketing and Native Ads. I suggest you all take a serious look at this and dig your heels in with this monster wave of growth coming to the mobile advertising platforms and sites across the globe. It's happening NOW!

Oh, and by the way:

1. The concept of an advertorial (native ad) originated with David Ogilvy* in the 60’s.

*From Wikipedia:

David Mackenzie Ogilvy CBE was an advertising executive who was widely hailed as "The Father of Advertising". In 1962, Time Magazine called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry".

Quotes by David Ogilvy

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.
 
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Native Ads, particularly advertorials, have always done well. Standalone pages that look like independent articles don't work quite so well in my experience, as advertorials fit among other articles making a reader scan them naturally.

The problem is that the FTC is currently debating whether advertorials are considered deceptive after the 2015 study that showed some readers thought they actually were editorials. The good thing about them is that the more useful the content is to the reader, the more likely you are to make a sale, so done well the reader gets a good article, the publication gets good content and you make sales. When it is done badly it annoys readers, and makes the publication look bad as people tend to assume they have vetted or written the content.
 
Yeah, there is a new format that seems to be working well and not as deceptive as some have objected to over the recent past. Also, they have been completely restructured for mobile. Actually, the FTC hasn't liked them since the 60's. They've always maintained that it's a form of deception, but the courts have set a precedence a dozen times since they first started showing up and ruled against the government every time. Also, the breadth of businesses solely dedicated to this form of advertising and promotion is exceptionally large and there isn't enough objections in the private sectors or government agencies to knock this out of the industry. Especially with the forecasted growth in this sector of advertising slated for the next few years. We're talking billions in revenue.
 
David Ogilvy
The king of copy!

I used to do advertorials for offline publications. Never occurred to me to use them (advertorials) online, especially since I don't really write anymore. However....billions + long term forecasts...how can a person not at least think about pursuing this type of promotion?

I think the icing on the cake is protection from the FTC. :) And no, I'm not saying produce crap, I'm just saying it would be nice not to have to worry about that aspect of things.
 
MI
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