Native advertising basics

MANILA, Philippines – In the worldwide web landscape, another digital marketing byword has taken shape. It’s called native advertising and it actually sounds more sophisticated than it should.

Wiki defines it simply as an online advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user’s experience—an ad that blends well on the page’s content that it doesn’t look like one so viewers are more open to its messages.

The word “native” is used to refer to the formatting of the advertising materials to make them appear more consistent with other media in the recipient’s universe.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau or IAB, the governing body for online advertisements, identifies six ad core categories appearing under six new display formats.

These are in-feed units, paid-search units, recommendations widget, promoted listings, in-ad with native element units, and customs or those that cannot be contained. They appear on your page as billboard, filmstrip, portrait, pushdown, sidekick, and slider.

“Native advertising is a concept encompassing both an aspiration as well as a suite of ad products,” IAB writes. “It is clear that most advertisers and publishers aspire to deliver paid ads that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.”

Peter Minnium of Marketingland.com says that native advertising represents a fundamental turning point in the evolution of digital advertising, mirroring similar historical shifts in the maturation of print and television advertising.

“Smart marketers, publishers, and agencies are moving aggressively to adjust their core strategies to reflect this, experimenting with and learning from new tactics.”

Minnium believes that it is simply the digital advertising industry’s adolescent growth phase as it becomes more comfortable in its own skin.

“Like in many youngsters, this growth spurt has come on quickly — with native rocketing onto the scene in 2013 like it was shot out of cannon.”

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