With the increasing competition in the realm of digital advertising, people are exposed to many ads on a single website. While some ads are obtrusively integrated into websites, some are masked together with content on the website. These are known as native advertising.
Unlike native advertising, pop-up ads interrupt with the users’ reading flow. In most cases, prospects are less receptive to such ads that blatantly sell products, making it feel like it is being pushed down their throats. This is especially so when the ads are irrelevant and disrupts the website page from loading.
This frustrates the user as the ads make it difficult to view a web page in peace. Furthermore, with the common association that pop-up ads may lead to malware, there is a growing vexation towards pop-up ads. Hence, to remove such unwanted ads, many have resorted to installing ad blockers. In 2016, 24.4% of U.S. internet users use ad blockers and this number has vastly increased to 47%.
How then can advertisers attract potential buyers when consumers are blocking these ads?
One possible solution to get your message across is through native advertising. The main essence of native ads is that they’re not supposed to look like ads. They fit well into the surrounding content and are often mistaken as normal content on a page unless labelled as an ad.
The most popular way that native ads are used is on social media, where users are most receptive. You can learn more about social media marketing here: How Social Media Ads Can Boost Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Apart from social media, Amazon is also playing a major role in the growth of native ads.
A research by eMarketer shows that native ads are expected to grow faster than the total U.S. display market. The amount spent on native ads in 2018 was about $32.9 billion, which is 58.3% of the total display ad spending. This number is expected to rise even further to $41.14 billion, accounting for 61.4% of the total ad spending in 2019.
They further explained in the report that 77% of all mobile display ad dollars will be spent on native ads and 96% on native social advertising. Evidently, native advertising is rising in popularity.
Advertisers can further leverage on native advertising by utilising user data. For instance, these native ads can be listed on sites that coincides with the users’ interest, thereby bringing relevant ads to users and increasing the readers’ interaction rate.
