J O I N A T I V E .T H E W O R L D O FN A T I V E A D V E R T I S I N G .B A S I C S EVERYTHING YOU WANTED

TO KNOW ABOUT NAT IVEADVERT IS ING

Part I

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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NATIVE ADVERTISING DEFINEDNative advertising terminologyNative advertising statistics

NATIVE ADVERTISING EXAMPLESBabbelBlinkist

NATIVE ADVERTISING GOALS1112 NATIVE ADVERTISING CHALLENGES

TOP NATIVE ADVERTISING PLATFORMS13NATIVE ADVERTISING BEST PRACTICES

NATIVE ADVERTISING KPIS18

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Native advertising types

Targeting Ad creation

NATIVEADVERTISINGDEFINED

Native advertising is anonline marketing method thatinvolves using paid ads thatmatch the look of thewebsite they’re displayed onand fit seamlessly into thesurrounding content.

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You face native ads every timewhen you surf the Internet. Youmight even fail to notice you facethem. But you do. You find themin your social media feeds, onyour favorite blog or Youtubechannel.

In most cases, when we talkabout native advertising, werefer to contentrecommendations that arewidely spread acrosswebsites, especially blogsand magazines. However, in-feed ads, promotedlistings, and paid search ads arealso considered types of nativeadvertising.

Native advertising lets you targeta highly relevant audience anddisplay your content to peoplewho might be interested in yourproduct or service. Both theirauthenticity and non-intrusivenature make users enjoy qualitynative ads.

Content pieces, such as blogposts, news articles, or landingpages, that are suggested to userson the site they are visiting.

N A T I V E A D V E R T I S I N GT E R M I N O L O G Y

Content recommendations

Ad types are displayed withincontent, product or social feeds,matching the look and feel of theeditorial content.

In-feed ads

An intermediary that connectsadvertisers with websites that hostads and helps them coordinate adcampaigns.

Ad network

Content discovery platform

Content Discovery platformsdisplay sponsored content onwidgets placed below or next toeditorial content on publisherwebsites and blogs. Using a seriesof algorithms that help to predictwhat users may like, theseplatforms deliver personalizedrecommendations for everyreader.

Bid

The maximum amount of moneyadvertiser is ready to pay for an ad tobe displayed or clicked on (it dependson the bidding model).

CPC bidding

Cost-per-click bidding model meansthat an advertiser will pay for eachclick on their ad. As the final price isset during the auction, CPC may vary,but it won't exceed the bid set.

CPM bidding

Cost-per-mille, or cost-per-thousand,is the bidding model where anadvertiser pays for impressions. Theterm denotes the price of 1,000impressions on one webpage.

Smart bidding

The campaign bidding strategy thatallows to maximize campaignperformance by adjusting bidsautomatically. In this model, anadvertisers sets the baseline bid,which is then optimized, based onhistoric network conversion data.

P R O G R A M M A T I CG L O S S A R Y

Open auction

An auction where all biddersconnected via the SSP haveaccess to a publisher's inventory,and the higher bidder wins animpression.

An open marketplace thatfacilitates the process of tradingdigital ad inventory. DSPs andSSPs are connected to adexchanges.

Ad exchange

A Demand Side Platform is asystem used by advertisers forbuying and managing adsthrough a single interface.

DSP

A Supply Side Platform is atechnology platform that enablespublishers to sell and managetheir advertising space inventory.

SSP

Programmatic advertising

A Data Management Platform is asoftware that is used to store andsort incoming cookie data and buildaudience segments to run highlytargeted advertising campaigns.

DMP

The use of technology to buy andsell ad inventory automatically,where advertisers and publishersonly set conditions that shouldbe met.

Programmatic native advertising

An advertising method where adsthat match the form and feel ofthe editorial content of thewebsite they’re displayed on aretraded programmatically.

The practice of buying and sellingad space through real-time auctionsthat occur while a webpage isloading.

Real-time bidding

NATIVEADVERTISINGSTATISTICS

In 2020, advertisers willdevote almost two-thirds of

display budgets to nativeads

Usage of Paid Content Distribution Channels by B2C Content Marketers (%) 

75%

0 25 50 75 100

Social media ads

PPC (search engines)

Banner ads

Sponsorships

Native ads (social ads not included)

Partner emails

Other

67%

$53billion will be spenton native ads by USadvertisers in 2020

56%Native videoadvertising

accounts for 56% ofvideo ad spending

The average CTR for native adsacross industries is 0.2%.

of users would ratherlearn about productsthrough content than

traditionaladvertisements

70%

* The statistics are collected from different sources. Please find references on page 20.

NATIVE ADVERTISING TYPES. IN-FEED ADS

In-feed ads are widely spread across social mediachannels, such as Facebook and Instagram, but youcan also find them on publisher content sites andnews aggregators.

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Sponsored

There's no single classification of native ads, as their formats are constantlyevolving. At Joinative, we identify two major types of native ads: in-feed nativeads and content recommendation widgets.

IN-FEED ADSEXAMPLES

Sponsored

2 3

Sponsored

IN-FEED CONTENTRECOMMENDATIONS32 PROMOTED

LISTINGS1 IN-FEED SOCIAL ADS

Sponsored in-feed linksto articles, landing pages,video content.

In-feed links to productpages displayed amongother carts on eCommercewebsites.

Ads inserted into thenewsfeeds on social medianetworks.

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Sponsored content

Recommended content remains a dominantnative ad format. Content recommendationwidgets are the units you see below or next toarticles on the publishers’ websites. They are usually marked with ‘sponsoredcontent ’ or ‘you may also like’ labels. Beingdisplayed within the editorial contentrecommendations, these units are non-intrusiveand don’t disrupt the user experience.

To show the most relevant contentrecommendations, content discoveryplatforms , such as Taboola or Outbrain ,compare individual audience profiles againstthe targeting options advertisers set andcustomize widgets for every user. Today,content discovery platforms offer advertisersa large number of targeting options, allowingthem to reach the right audiences at the righttime.

The recommended contentexample by taboola

CONTENTRECOMMENDATIONWIDGETS

These recommendation widgets are oftenplaced on premium websites, including TheGuardian, HuffPost, NBC News, CNN, DailyTelegraph, and more. Publishers often rely oncontent discovery networks to promote theirown content on their own websites.

Paid content____________

NATIVE ADVERTISINGEXAMPLES

Babbel is the world’s first language learning app. Toraise awareness of the platform and reach more peoplewilling to learn languages, Babbel runs multiplemarketing campaigns, native advertising included.

The company has been amplifying its content through a variety of popular contentdistribution platforms, including Taboola , Outbrain , Verizon Gemini , and Revcontent.Their ads are widely spread across the world’s most popular websites, such asHuffPost , CBS News , Forbes , Reuters , and more.

KEY LEARNINGSThe headline features the main challenge of a person learninglanguages – learn a new language quickly.

On the landing page, a reader finds a video with users' reviews.Engaging content + social proof = effective landing page.

No polished stock imagery. 

Babbel effectively combines the power of content marketing and native advertising.The Babbel’s landing pages are their blog posts. Babbel’s main content marketingchannel is their online magazine – it lets them connect with potential users andtherefore achieve more registrations and downloads.

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Blinkist is a book-summarizing subscription

service that puts keyinsights of 3000+

bestselling nonfictionbooks into pieces that can

be read or listened to injust 15 minutes.

Blinkist runs native advertising campaigns toscale acquisition efforts beyond social mediachannels and generate downloads to their app. The company distributes their content usingcontent discovery platforms, namely Taboolaand Outbrain. You can find their ads on premiumpublisher websites (if you're in their targetaudience).

KEY LEARNINGS

In this campaign, Blinkist decided to go with an intriguingheadline to attract the widest possible audience.

On its landing page, Blinkist highlights that the app is built bythe world's smartest people.

To encourage downloads and reach the campaign goals, afree trial of the app is offered.

NATIVE ADVERTISING GOALS

1Brand awareness is about establishinga strong online presence for yourbrand. If you manage to build ageneral knowledge of your brandamong your target audience, it’s likelythat your brand becomes the firstthing coming to mind when theseconsumers are ready to take action. .

Native advertising has already provedextremely effective for reaching yourperformance marketing goalsand increasing purchase intent.

Many brands leverage native advertisingto achieve brand awareness goals.Displaying their articles and videos onthe world’s most popular websites, theyreach wide but still highly relevantaudiences.

BUILD BRAND AWARENESS.

It allows you to attract leads bydriving your readers to completespecific actions, such as downloadingyour application, signing up for anewsletter, or any other action thatconnects your prospect with yourbrand.

ATTRACT LEADS.

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3 DRIVE SALES

Still, it’s not likely that someone will decideto make a purchase when seeing yoursponsored content for the first time. That’swhy campaigns aimed at driving sales aremore likely to be successful when you’retargeting people who are most interested inbuying your products, e.g., retargeting yourwebsite visitors.

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Advertisers aim at driving direct sales lessfrequently than building brand awareness orincreasing engagements, but it doesn’t meanthe contribution of native advertising to thesales process isn’t significant.

4STRENGTHEN CUSTOMERLOYALTY

Along with building brand awareness ordriving sales, native advertising is yourchance to create a relationship thatbuilds trust and loyalty.

Due to their form, native ads don’tnecessarily make a pitch for a productor service.

Customers appreciate meaningfulcontent created to provide real value,rather than simply make money.

NATIVE ADVERTISINGCHALLENGES

Measuring native ads performance can be troublesome Does native advertising really work for you? Do you know which metrics you shouldtrack? Measuring ROI is still a conundrum for many brands. Native advertisingperformance can often be challenging to measure, especially when you run severalcampaigns at once.

Native advertising takes time Native advertising is undoubtedly a powerful method of online marketing, but you needto do it right to leverage its full potential. To attract your audience’s attention andconvert them into customers, your native ads should truly stand out from the crowd.Without relevant experience, creating a genuine native ad can be challenging and takestime.

It’s difficult to take your pick among multiple options When you finally decide to invest in native advertising, you need to choose the rightplatform that will help you achieve your marketing goals. There’s definitely noshortage of native advertising companies, and it hardly makes the choice easier. When you start with paid search campaigns, you go to Google Ads; when you advertiseon social media, you go with Facebook, Instagram, etc. But what are the best native adnetworks to go with? How many platforms should you use to expand your reach? Isthere a specific network that’s better suited for your industry or business? These arejust a few questions advertisers face entering native advertising.

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Verizon Media, widely known as Yahoo Geminior Oath Native, is the only platform that offers

search and native advertising in one place.

Content posted through Yahoo Gemini flowsthrough Yahoo’s home page and other Yahoo’spublications, including Yahoo Finance, Yahoo

Entertainment, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo News,Yahoo Lifestyles, and others.

TOP NATIVE ADVERTISINGPLATFORMS

Taboola is the world's leading content discoveryand native advertising platform that helps

marketers to reach over 1.4 billion unique usersevery month.

The platform also lets you fully control yourcampaigns – from setting your own goals to

editing your campaign daily ad delivery when thecampaign is live.

Outbrain is another popular content discoveryplatform that displays boxes of links on

publishers' websites.

Their recommended content appears acrossabsolute top-quality placements, including CNN,

Fox News, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian,Mashable, and even more.

Revcontent is often called the top growingnative advertising platform. They provide strict

requirements for both publishers andadvertisers.

Due to their high-quality standards, the vast

majority of traffic generated from Revcontentnative ads comes from Tier 1 countries such as

the USA and UK.

Plista is a global native advertising networkthat has built up an exclusive inventory of

premium editorial environments.

The platform allows advertisers to reach usersacross all channels and devices on thousands

of premium publishers. 80% of its traffic isfrom Germany, Russia, Poland, and Australia.

Dianomi is an exclusive advertising platformthat focuses on advertisers offering financeand business related products and services.

Dianomi’s native ads are displayed solelywithin finance publications or dedicated

finance sections on multi-topic websites.

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LiquidM is a universal tool for anyprogrammatic needs. It 's known as the most

user-friendly self-service DSP for efficientprogrammatic campaign management.

It provides access to 70+ billion daily inventory

across major SSPs and premium publishers.

Sharethrough is an advertising automationplatform that powers modern programmatic

display and video ads.

Sharethrough delivers in-feed native ads toprecise audiences with off-the-shelf media

packages or custom targeting.

ADYOULIKE is the native advertising platformthat combines user experience, artificial

intelligence and semantic targeting to powerbetter ad experiences.

Due to the ADYOULIKE’s Artificial Intelligence

solution advertisers can define a semanticcontext for their campaigns, using recognitionof keywords and feelings in editorial contents.

ADUP is a native advertising tool that could bea good fit for small businesses. AdUp

successfully works with German-speakingpublishers (90% of their traffic comes fromGermany), and therefore, it's widely used by

companies that target German-speakingaudiences.

TripleLift serves 176 billion monthlyimpressions across the world's

leading publishers, including The New YorkTimes, BBC, The Guardian, Fox News, MSN,

and more.

The award-winning advertising technologyprovider. Nativo enables storytelling at scale

with the largest native reach and revealsinsights that unlock return-on-content. 72% of

its traffic comes from the USA.

TripleLift is a leading programmatic nativeadvertising company that combines in-feed

native ads and seamless automation to makenative advertising scalable.

According to eMarketer,88% of native ads will be

served to mobile devices in2020. If that’s not a case to

join in on that trend, wedon’t know what is.

NATIVE ADVERTISING BEST PRACTICES

If you want to reach more people and build brand awareness , go with the basictargeting options. Exclude irrelevant audiences configuring audience locations, devicetypes, or interests. Split your campaigns by different variables to tailor campaigncontent for different audiences and see which demographics you should focuson. Later, when your campaign is live for some time, you can check out how itperforms on different websites and exclude the least productive ones.

TARGETING

-- Nina Benning , Media SalesManager at Taboola

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Your choice of the targeting options will depend on the goal you set.

Are you aiming to drive sales? Customers are 43% more likely to convert when they’reretargeted. It’s extremely effective to target users who have previously interacted withyour ads or specific webpages.

If aimed at lead acquisition, advertisers opt for retargeting or creating lookalikeaudiences – mind that the second option is available for the US-based audiences only. Ifyou target audiences from other countries, you'd better go with basic targeting optionsand optimize for the ones that deliver the best performance.

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NATIVE ADVERTISINGBEST PRACTICES

AD CREATION.IMAGERY

The ad creation should be easilyadaptable, with excellent quality

of images and spelling, whichpresents the message to thetarget audience. If you run a

native ad campaign, you shouldcreate 3-4 variables at least and

test which one works where.

-- Zsofia Toth , Programmaticand Ad Tech Lead at Euronews

Creatives are really important, butsometimes they are underrated bymarketers. First, be careful withusing photo-stock images. Theyare the easiest ones to get, but

tons of other companies are usingthese images at the same time.

-- Maria Kristalinskaya , Country Manager at Blinkist

The image is the first thing users see.Use high-quality and eye-catchingthumbnails to get noticed.

For better results, we recommendthat you test a lot of differentcombinations of titles andthumbnails in your campaigns.

Whether native advertising will beeffective for you or not highlydepends on the way your ad looks.

Photographs have almost 50% higherCTR.

Trigger emotions.

Use photos rather thanillustrations.

Use imagery that triggers anemotional response.

Opt for simlicity.Avoid images that illustrate lotsof details or text and go for simpleimagery instead.

AD CREATION.HEADLINESUse power words. There are words that help writersimpress their audience, get themexcited, or encourage them to keepreading. These words mightinclude emotional trigger words, suchas joyful, astonishing, abusive,anxious, mind-blowing , etc.

Having a clear understandingof one’s audience enables

advertisers to createmeaningful creatives, select

relevant publishers andtarget better performing

native placements.

NATIVE ADVERTISINGBEST PRACTICES

Compare the following two titles: ‘Howto climb the corporate ladder’ and‘Amazon CMO shares tips to build asuccessful career,’ which one wouldyou rather click on?

Be precise.

-- Tatevik Mkrtchyan ,Marketing Manager at LiquidM

Mind that your ad headline should benot only engaging but also simple andclear. Setting unrealistic expectations,you’ll attract broad audiences and payfor clicks from people who won’tinteract with your content afterwards.

Stay credible.

What will happen to users if theyclick? Will they learn something? Thenuse the ‘learn’ or ‘discover’ keyword.Will they get a discount? Mention it inthe title.

Denote a benefit.

NATIVEADVERTISINGKPIS

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Measuring native advertising performance will help you not only evaluate itseffectiveness for your brand but also optimize your campaigns for better results.

It’s crucial to know what metrics you should be tracking on your way to reaching yournative advertising goals. And here’s where the biggest challenge for many marketersarises. Your native advertising performance metrics will differ depending on the goalsyou set.

If you decide to use native advertising to boost brand awareness, the followingmetrics will show you whether you’re on the right track.

Bounce ratePages per sessionAverage session durationReturning users

Viewable impressions

Unique visitors

CTR

Native ads leave a brand impression on viewers,even though they don’t continue on to yourwebsite.Viewable impressions tell you how manytimes your native ad is seen by users. Don’tconfuse it with the ‘impressions’ metric thatcounts how many times a campaign item isdisplayed.

How many people visited your website afterseeing your native ad? If your website trafficincreases significantly after you launch yourcampaign – that’s a good sign of growing brandawareness.

Knowing the CTR of your campaign items, you canbetter understand if the content you promotemeets interests of the publisher’s audience.

Video views & video completion rate

If you use native ads to promote videos, thesemetrics will be the most important for you.Content discovery platforms, such as Taboola orOutbrain, allow you to track the number ofcompleted views only. Placing native ad videoson social networks, including Facebook orYouTube, you’ll find data on average viewduration, audience retention reports, andcompletion reports.

Behavior metrics

After people click on your native ad and come toyour website, they interact with it differently. Toanalyze the quality of this web traffic, track thefollowing metrics with Google Analytics.

If your goal is to drive sales, your KPIs will be similar to the ones we mentionedfor the lead acquisition goal, but this time your conversion will be a sale.

If you campaign is aimed at attracting leads by driving your readers to completespecific actions that connect your prospect with your brand, the following KPIs willtell you whether your campaign is effective or not.

NATIVE ADVERTISING KPIS

CTR

Even though the number of clicks isn't your majorperformance indicator for these campaigns, youstill want to know whether your ads attract usersor not.

Conversions

A conversion driven by your native ad campaignisn’t necessarily a sale. At this stage, conversionsinclude ebook downloads, signups, and otheractions that help you attract leads. If you’ve beensuccessfully building brand awareness for sometime, you might want to move on by creating truebrand affinity. How many people completed the desired action?Analyze the number of conversions yoursponsored content generates to understand howit’s perceived by your target audience.

CVR

CPL

The conversion rate is the percentage ofpeople who completed the desired action outof people who clicked on your ad. For instance, if 1000 people visited yourwebsite and 100 of them started a free trial,your conversion rate is 10%. This metric willtell you whether you should audit your landingpage, revisit your messaging, or evenreconsider your initial objective.

The cost per lead metric tells you how cost-effective your marketing campaigns are whenit comes to lead acquisition. Lowering your cost-per-lead without affectinglead quality is always a challenge. But if yousee a decrease in CPL accompanied by a lift inleads and CVR, you’re on the right track.

NOTE: When your goal is a sale, native advertising should be measured not only as aseparate technique but also as a part of your overall game plan. To be fair to eachpiece of the customer journey, we recommend that you turn to attribution modeling.

JOINATIVE. helps with management and optimization of your native advertisingcampaigns. With JOINATIVE., you'll get support in your native advertising efforts fromlaunching your first campaign to making the most out of the performance reporting.

NATIVE STARTER NATIVE MANAGEDNATIVE PRO

Native advertisingconsultancy.

Together, we’ll launch,test, and optimizecampaigns to high

performance. Eventually,your team will be ready to

manage and scalecampaigns without any

assistance.

Native advertising agency.

We'll manage your nativecampaigns and make sure

your performance goals aremet.

Native advertisingmanagement and

optimization tool.

With Native Pro, you getaccess to cross-platform

reporting, rule-basedoptimization, alerts anddata structuring for all

your campaigns.

REFERENCES

ABOUT JOINATIVE

https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-native-advertising-2019

https://www.outbrain.com/blog/native-ads-vs-display-ads/

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-

content/uploads/2016/01/NEOMG_Whitepaper_final_11-10-15_lk.pdf

https://www.emarketer.com/chart/233247/usage-of-paid-content-

distribution-channels-by-b2c-content-marketers-worldwide-july-2019-

of-respondents

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That's it!

We hope this overview of the native advertising world marketing willhelp you run your first native ad campaigns more effectively. Contact us ifyou have any questions about native advertising or JOINATIVE. services.

U N L O C K N A T I V E A D V E R T I S I N G W I T H

JOINATIVE.

joinative.com

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