• Native Advertising

While native advertising is widely used among advertisers and publishers in the online space, it is also still growing at an impressive rate. In fact, last month, over 900 brands ran native ads for the first time! Every month, MediaRadar analyzes thousands of brands utilizing native advertising.

• Native Advertising

Advertiser spend on native advertising continues to rise, and it's become one of the most popular ways for advertisers to truly engage with their audience. It's no longer a matter of "if" for publishers when it comes to integrating native ads into their content. In 2017, native advertising spend was more than any other form of display advertising. We're beginning to see native advertising in many offline environments, as well.

• Advertising Trends
• Native Advertising

Who uses native advertising? Quite a lot of brands, actually. In fact, native advertising is one of the fastest growing products in digital advertising today.

• Advertising Trends
• Native Advertising

Native ad campaigns are continually changing. In fact, native is one of the fastest growing products in digital advertising today. In light of this, each month, we review the native ads we've seen and highlight the most prevalent campaigns. Perhaps you can include some of these strategies in your own native offerings.

In the MediaRadar Native Advertising Roundup, we select four noteworthy campaigns to highlight, offering insights into their native strategy. In last month's roundup, we saw innovative campaigns from Kia, Immaculate Baking Company, TitleMax, and PNC Bank.

This month, we're highlighting campaigns from Google, Sony, PayPal and Asurion.

• Native Advertising

Native ad campaigns are continually changing. In fact, native is one of the fastest growing products in digital advertising today. In light of this, each month, we review the native ads we've seen and highlight the most prevalent campaigns. Perhaps you can include some of these strategies in your own native offerings.

• Advertising Trends
• Native Advertising
• TV Advertising

This is the first in a forthcoming series of posts in which we'll discuss ad integration across many different sports, including the NFL, NBA, NHL, and more. 

The Rise of OTT

Rising competition from OTT advertisers is leaving a lot to consider for networks telecasting live professional sporting events.

The rise in OTT programming is due to the way people now consume television.

The fact is not that people are no longer watching network programming, it’s that they are watching in more places than ever before.

For advertisers and ad sales reps, that means it’s becoming more and more difficult to know how to effectively reach viewers during sporting event broadcasts.

• Native
• Native Advertising
• Programmatic Native

Native is finally beginning to decelerate.

For years now, there have been rumblings about whether the continued rapid growth of native advertising was sustainable.

For the first time, MediaRadar data shows that the number of advertisers buying native has plateaued over the last 12 months:

• Native Advertising

On October 10th, I hosted a panel on native advertising with leaders from Rodale, The Foundry (Time Inc.), and PopSugar.  All three have had significant success in this fast-growing segment of the media market.  At MediaRadar, we’ve been covering this market for a few years now, so I was especially curious to get into the details on what’s working best. 

• Native Advertising

For publishers and their advertisers, it's become evident over time that there is a perfect middle-ground that needs to be met when producing online advertisements that are fair, clear, and engaging for consumers.

We know that audiences don't like to be bombarded or interrupted with advertising. Ad types like pop-ups and auto-play video ads, for example, have never been popular among consumers, and are often considered "annoying" and "disruptive."

With the rise of native advertising, however, we now know that advertising can actually be too discrete, as well. Why? Because, even though audiences don't want to be disrupted by ads, they also don't want to be duped into believing an advertisement is anything other than what it actually is.

To regulate this middle-ground, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released Native Advertising: A Guide for Business in December of 2015.

The release of this guide was right on time, too, as the use of native advertising increased dramatically over the course of 2016.

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According to the FTC, their job is to, "ensure that long-standing consumer protection principles apply in the digital marketplace, including native advertising."

In their native advertising guide, the FTC defines what they consider to be deception in advertising:

“Under the FTC Act, an act or practice is deceptive if there is a material misrepresentation or omission of information that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances. A misrepresentation is material if it is likely to affect consumers’ choices or conduct regarding an advertised product or the advertising for the product.”

“A basic truth-in-advertising principle is that it’s deceptive to mislead consumers about the commercial nature of content. Advertisements or promotional messages are deceptive if they convey to consumers expressly or by implication that they’re independent, impartial, or from a source other than the sponsoring advertiser - in other words, that they’re something other than ads.”

To battle ad deception, in their Guide for Business, the FTC runs through the language and layout of how publishers should be disclosing native ads. Within their rundown, there are ten different ways for consumers to identify native advertising.

MediaRadar's analysis of native advertising in Q3 of 2017 showed that only six of those ten FTC identifiers were consistently being adopted. Below is a list of those six identifiers, with creative examples for each, so you can have an easier time spotting native ads.

Six ways to spot native advertising: