Why native advertising isn’t just a fad

It is a common misconception in the media world that the term “native advertising” is nothing more than a buzz word swarming around 2014/15. But that’s simply not the case, in fact, native advertising has become somewhat of a phenomenon over the past few years and to back this up; agencies and brands alike are investing even more money into the native forum.

Increasing native budgets

Budgets in native advertising are continuing to rise and with advances being made in ad technology, the development of programmatic and the significant rise in mobile advertising; this spend is set to soar.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) published a report during 2014, which found that 63% of marketers were planning on further increasing their native advertising budgets in 2015. Further to this, BI Intelligence also indicates that native ad spend is on the rise and is set to reach an estimated £10.7 billion by the end of 2015.
Other studies highlight that native advertising will be worth a whopping £21 billion in the US alone by 2018 – a pretty large increase from the modest £4.7 billion spent during 2013.

Why is native advertising here to stay?

There are four main reasons as to why native is set to remain at the forefront of the media world:

• The performance of native advertising campaigns

The main reason behind the increase in spend in native is down to its performance levels. DoubleClick and Opera Celta found that desktop native ads actually outperformed traditional forms of advertising in terms of engagement and click through rates (CTR).

• The increase in mobile native advertising

It’s a fact: native advertising is the best medium for mobile and with feeds becoming the best way to distribute content, it’s becoming all about the in-feed, these days. The typical mobile user will surf the web on their smartphone for 58 minutes every day; with 28% of digital content being consumed by via mobile; an increase compared to the 22% in 2014.

• The rise of programmatic native advertising

Programmatic trading is set to become the future of native advertising and there’s simply no escaping it. Programmatic simply works by serving native ad placements across sites on an impression basis. This method employs the use of real time data and technology to ensure that users only see the most relevant native advertisement.

Programmatic native advertising promises to boost user experience and scale content distribution effectively.

• It adds value to any campaign

As a brand it is vital to create a campaign that is value for money and brings a return on investment. However, it is also important that this campaign is of interest and relevant to the user – and native advertising guarantees this.

With the increase in spend and budgets from both brands and agencies, along with the above four reasons as to why native is so effective, it’s safe to say that native advertising isn’t a fad that will disappear into the night, in fact, it’s very much here to stay.