Native advertising

Greatest degree of effectiveness with unobtrusive advertising

Native advertising is a successful trend in online marketing. This is because it offers a wide range of benefits, while requiring little effort and incurring comparatively low costs. Many internet users desire unobtrusive advertising, and in many respects native advertising fulfils this desire. At the same time, it is also a solution for companies whose success from displayed advertising has suffered somewhat due to "banner blindness".

The overarching term "native advertising" comprises online marketing methods that are integrated "naturally", i.e. unobtrusively into their surrounding medium. This means that these marketing methods are acknowledged to a much higher degree by users of the internet offering, and the brand being advertised benefits from user interest in the offer.

In addition to advertorials, established native advertising methods include e.g. sponsored stories on Facebook, promoted tweets or advertising videos that are shown before YouTube videos.

Interest as an instrument

The prototype of a native ad is the advertorial: an article (with or without images and video) that is drafted by an editorial team. Although this article is of a promotional nature, it provides users with added value, and is edited and integrated into the website on which it appears in a manner that is unobtrusive.

A user that visits a website is generally interested in the content it offers. Hence, if promotional materials are integrated into this website in a manner that is so inconspicuous that it does not form a visual or an editorial break with the usual content, there is a significantly higher probability that the user will also consume the promotional content with the same amount of interest. In this manner, the actual interest in the website is also transferred to the promotional content — and because it emphasizes the benefits of a brand or a product and encapsulates a message about a brand, the native ad is able to increase brand awareness and reach, as well as the number of conversions.

Unobtrusiveness as a benefit

Many users are annoyed by loud, blinking and animated banners, pop-ups and overlays that hold them back from consuming the content they are interested in. These forms of advertising are seen by many users as annoying and unnecessary. Native advertising offers a solution to this problem, as users do not find native ads to be annoying, meaning that these ads are actually consumed. Because of this, they have proven to be significantly more effective than banner ads.