Native Advertising Webinar: Best Practices and Local Examples

Native Webinar Questions

There were some great questions from this Webinar Q&A, so we’ve added them below for ease of reference.

Question:

From my experience, the quality of traffic from native ads hasn’t been as strong compared to other channels in terms of metrics such as bounce rate and generation of lower funnel conversions. This could be because users are mistaking the placements for content rather than ads themselves and only realising this after the clickthrough. How can we improve the quality of traffic in light of this behaviour?

Sebastian:

There’s a three-part process to work through to answer this question:

First: Transparent disclosure is crucial! If you’re worried that people are mistaking the placements for content and then landing on an advertising page, then you need to first look closely at the actual delivery of the placements for your Native partner, and the disclosure on them.

Second: If the disclosure on those placements is strong, then carefully consider the offer and promise you’re making in the ad creative, and the reality of your landing page. Are they effectively aligned so that the person seeing and responding to the ad is getting exactly what they’d expect?

Third: If you have strong and transparent disclosure from your Native partner and there is strong alignment of your ad and the landing page yet you still have poor results, you may have the wrong audience on your page. Your Native partner can help you with better audience targeting.

Question:

What’s the common challenge you face when working with brands? What is something you wish brands would understand more of?

Chantelle:

A common challenge is trust, and understanding what the publisher they’re partnering with is all about – what they stand for and what their readers look to them to provide. It’s really important that brands realise we’re all working towards one common goal, and that’s the best possible reach, engagement and positive association for the campaign. If we’re pushing against a certain headline or image, it’s because we want our audience to only have the best feelings about your brand and genuinely enjoy and engage with the content in a way that’ll achieve exactly that.

Question:

Is it possible to get decent reach with a native campaign or is it just about engagement?

Sebastian:

Reach is quite simple from the perspective of Native ads. At Verizon Media, Nielsen has verified that we reach over 18m Australians with our Native marketplace which I believe is the largest Nielsen verified marketplace. If we need more reach, then our DSP platform is able to combine our Native marketplace with the publishers and media owners that can deliver a strong result for you.

Taking off my Verizon Media hat, there’s a crucial element to reach within Native. Because of the integration of Form & Function that is inherent in the Native channel, the quality of that reach is crucial. It’s not the right thing for a Native campaign to serve ads across tens of thousands of sites. A sitelist like that guarantees your form & function integration is with sites you most likely don’t want to be a part of. Reach with Native ads is easy, but better to find that reach on fewer, bigger, more integrated Native placements than with a huge sitelist of low volume sites.

Question:

Without naming the client can you give you an example of a client idea that just hasn’t worked or resonated with your audience?

Chantelle:

The potential success of a native can be derailed by going too niche or too branded – it’s fine to target a very select audience with content, but why wouldn’t you want to speak to more potential customers in the process? Finding broader avenues and creative ways in gives a brand the opportunity to be seen by as many people as possible through content they genuinely want to stop scrolling to engage with.

Examples might include targeting small business owners or parents. We know some of our audiences include these people, but they only make up a portion, and we can still speak to this audience without cutting off our other readers in the process. It’s all about spreading that net far and wide from the get-go.

Question:

Would you recommend native instream and native content for branding?

Sebastian:

Yes! Absolutely to both, I’m going to answer for Native In-Feed. There are some clear requirements to maximise branding value for a campaign:

• You must be seen. Speaking for Verizon Native, we take a strict requirement here and only serve an ad when it’s viewable. This means we deliver 100% viewability on every impression and you can validate that with most viewability verification vendors in Australia.
• The higher percentage of the screen that you cover the better the result. This is where a format like the full screen Moments helps to ensure attention to your brand campaign.
• You must reach as many people as possible. Ultimately this means you either spend an awful lot of money or you find the most efficient rates possible. Without getting into too much detail on rates and results, on the benchmarks and case studies around, In-Feed Native will reach far more people for the same budget than any other channel – meaning you either spend less for the same result, or you reach more people for the same spend.

There is a lot more that goes into building a brand. That starts with all the work to segment your market and target the right audience. Every great brand owes an enormous debt to the incredible creatives who make the brand shine! Those are true for every channel.

Question:

Do you think there is a difference in the way that different age groups accept native content?

Chantelle:

I think that 18-35 year olds are definitely more aware of content and its place in the advertising ecosystem, in comparison to an older demographic, however, they’re not consuming digital media in the way that young people are. At the end of the day, the acceptance of native content is less about age as it is about the quality of a product. A good ad is still entertaining, right?

Question:

Do you think digital audio will embrace native in a more automated way?

Sebastian:

Possibly. It’s a challenging question to answer. Overall Audio is embracing automation rapidly and I think the Australian Audio & Radio companies are leading world-wide. As a Native specialist but an amateur to Audio, I think the biggest challenge will be establishing the framework for what Form & Function means for Audio. From my understanding the best example of Form & Function in Audio is Live Reads. I struggle to imagine how to automate Live Reads but I’m open to being told I’m wrong here!

Question:

What’s your position on 3rd party cookies and how native providers will fair in the future with their removal?

Sebastian:

Another great question that I don’t necessarily have the complete answer to. I do want to say that at this point, the data shows that most consumption of media is done on devices and browsers that don’t enable 3^rd party cookies and perhaps the change isn’t as big as we are all worried about. 

First and foremost, the best Native ads are properly integrated with the Form & Function of the sites the ad is delivered on. This integration means fewer, bigger partnerships Native outperforms a sitelist of tens of thousands of sites.