Digital advertising is a key marketing tool for reaching and engaging target audiences. But as people become more sophisticated in how they discover and interact with content, native advertising provides brands with a new way to get their message out.
Below, we walk you through everything you need to know to get started with native advertising: what it is, why it’s important, how it works, and how to use native ads to reach your marketing goals.
What Is Native Advertising?
The term ‘native advertising’ refers to a paid ad placement that appears in the same format and style as the non-paid content where it’s placed. For example, sponsored posts on your LinkedIn feed are clearly labeled as such, but otherwise they look the same as the organic posts around them.
Native ads can be found everywhere, from your favorite publisher sites to your favorite social channels.
As an advertisement that fits seamlessly into the user experience, they’re more contextual than other forms of digital advertising (e.g. display and banner ads). Instead of appearing off to the side or across the top of a web page, native ads mimic the look, feel, and function of a medium’s content.
This formatting helps improve the user experience, making the ad into part of the user’s feed rather than an interruption. While people are trained to ignore banner ads and the like, native ads have a better opportunity of being seen — precisely because they blend in.
Due to their effectiveness, native ads are becoming more and more popular, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all digital display ad spend. In fact, native digital display advertising spend in the US was expected to reach a new high of $87.6 billion in 2022, more than doubling in just three years.
Why Use Native Advertising?
Content has become a central part of our lives. From the moment we wake up to the moment we say goodnight, we devour news articles, television shows, photos and social media posts. According to eMarketer, the average US adult spends 12 hours and 1 minute each day consuming media. Yes, you read that right.
With so much content in our lives, and so little time to consume it all, today’s web users have trained themselves to ignore intrusive ads and more people are using ad blocking software to remove ads from sites altogether.
Native advertising is designed specifically not to look like an ad, making it harder to ignore. Instead, it’s designed to look like the rest of the content on the page. According to research from Outbrain, 75% of consumers trust content and recommendations seen in the editorial environment (native ads), versus 54% who trust user-generated content and recommendations.
Native ads also have the potential to increase conversions. A study by Taboola found that native ads were more effective than the industry average at raising brand favorability, message association, and customer consideration.
6 Universal Types of Native Ads (And Examples of Each)
Similar to other forms of advertising, native ads have several formats, each with its own set of advantages. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has identified the following six types of native advertising.
1. In-feed units
In-feed native advertising units are similar to the scenario we outlined above. If you’re seeing sponsored posts appear in your social media feeds or on a publisher’s site (e.g. Forbes, Mashable), those are in-feed units. They’re paid placements that appear directly in-line with other articles, posts, or editorial content.
In-feed units look different from site to site as they fit into each site’s unique user experience. For instance, LinkedIn’s in-feed ad units (LinkedIn Sponsored Content) look like this:
2. Paid search units
Native advertising is also a popular advertising method for search engines. Those top-of-the-page advertising placements you’re bidding on? Technically, they’re native ad placements as those top paid search results are made to fit in with the organic search results below them.
3. Recommendation widgets
Another spot where you’ll find native ads on publisher sites, social media, and even search engine results pages is in recommendation widgets. You’ll often see these ads off to the side of a web page, or even at the end of an article, to recommend additional content you might like.
4. Promoted listings
If you have an online shopping habit (like many of us), you see promoted listings regularly. To give you an example, when searching for new marketing books, several sponsored listings appear on Amazon.com. However, while those publishers paid for those media placements, they’re made to look just like the organic listings.
5. Display ad with native elements
This type of native advertising looks just like any other ad you might see online. You may even see them in an ad container or banner. What makes them native, however, is that they’re contextually relevant to the site they appear on and the content they appear next to.
Campbell’s, for example, placed an in-ad unit on allrecipes.com for their recipe collection. While the ad doesn’t look like the actual recipes listed on the site, it is contextually relevant to the page.
6. Custom
Given the speed of technological change and the potential for publisher partnerships, the IAB’s last type of native advertising leaves the door open for a range of possibilities. Creating a new Snapchat filter (below) is an example of a custom native ad. The filter, while a form of paid media, fits within the app’s user interface alongside Snapchat’s other filters.
Native Ads and Programmatic Buying
Many native ads are placed through programmatic buying; that is, an automated buying and selling of ad space through an intelligent platform. Programmatic advertising has seen double-digit growth year-over-year for multiple years, with total spend expected to pass $200 billion in the U.S. and $493 billion globally in 2023.
This comes as little surprise considering the speed, accuracy, and intelligence of programmatic ad buying software. Just plug in your campaign goals and KPIs, and watch the programmatic algorithm evolve based on audience behavior. The marketplace can change in an instant and programmatic buying can help to ensure that your ad campaigns quickly adapt to change.
When applied to native advertising, your in-feed, paid search, or other native ads will have a greater ability to reach specific audience segments. The programmatic algorithm will also help optimize native ad campaigns, doubling down on what works and pausing what doesn’t.
The Future of Native Advertising
It’s safe to say native advertising will continue to evolve. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping up on the following native advertising trends.
Social media
Currently, native ads are seen on search engines, publisher sites, retail sites, and social media platforms. The latter is forecasted to grow by nearly 14% in 2023. Instead of purchasing ad placements on publications, brands are investing more on in-feed advertisements, such as LinkedIn Sponsored Content and other similar ad types found on social media.
Mobile
In the fourth quarter of 2022, mobile website traffic hit an all-time high of 59.16% of all web traffic. And as a whole, mobile digital advertising spend is expected to reach nearly $400 billion by 2024. Considering the advantages that native advertising presents on mobile devices, native mobile ads will also become an even more key investment. With limited real estate on mobile devices for display or banner ads, native ads afford more opportunities to engage your target audience on mobile.
Native video ads
According to eMarketer, native video advertising grew 42.6% in 2022, to $32.61 billion, and is forecasted to hit $38.3 billion in 2023. As consumers continue to demand more video content, native video ads are becoming more prevalent in social media feeds, publisher sites, and more. For best practices on LinkedIn Video Ads, see this new research from LinkedIn and Vidmob.
User-generated content
Modern buyers value authenticity. User-generated content (UGC) helps build brand authenticity, creating deeper connections with your audience. Expect to see more native ads exploring UGC. For example: you might see more polls, surveys, or social media posts appear in native ad placements to drive audience interaction and build trust.
Ethics disclosure
While native advertising resembles natural content, it’s important for credibility and trust-building that advertisements are clearly labeled as such. Expect to see more and more platforms creating ad disclosures that are more prominent — even on native ads. This gives the user greater transparency on what is and isn’t a paid promotion, so they can make more informed content consumption decisions.
9 Steps for Creating Effective Native Ads on Linkedin
LinkedIn makes it easy to reach your target audience directly in their feed, with native ads in a variety of formats. To create the most effective native advertisements on LinkedIn, follow these steps:
Step 1: Set your goals
Do you want to generate leads? Build brand awareness? Add followers to your Page? Like anything pertaining to marketing, it’s important to set a goal, or a series of goals, first. Once you have your goals in mind, determine which KPIs will work best for measuring success.
Step 2: Create the right message for your audience
Now that you know why you want people to read your content, it’s important to decide who and what. Who do you want to consume your content? What do you want them to see or read? Answering these questions will help your content strategy take shape.
To create the right message, think about your target audience and what they find valuable. Analyze their behavior, preferences, and interests to identify content and ads they care about. Then, find a good intersection of what your audience values and what your brand is best positioned to deliver.
Step 3: Choose the right format
People use platforms in different ways. How you prefer to use LinkedIn likely differs from someone else. For example, you might spend the majority of your time on the platform in your messages instead of scrolling through your feed. And that’s okay. For marketers, this means being strategic and diversifying the types of native ads you choose on LinkedIn.
There are three five types of native ads on LinkedIn: Sponsored Content, Message Ads, and Dynamic Ads.
Choose the right native ad format on LinkedIn by analyzing your goals, message, and audience segments. If you need more space to share your message, Message Ads are a great option as you have more room to work with. However, if your goal is to build brand awareness, LinkedIn Sponsored Content or Dynamic Ads may offer greater reach for your budget.
Step 4: Generate your content and ads
Now, it’s time to put the digital pen to paper and craft your content. When writing, continue to think about how your audience will experience your message given the context of when and where it will appear.
Some best practices to keep in mind are:
- Use a visual. Images and videos attract a larger audience and tend to drive stronger performance. When adding images to your LinkedIn native ads, use images that are 1200x627 pixels.
- The shorter, the better. Concise copy tends to perform best in native ads. Headlines should be fewer than 60 characters and intro text should be somewhere in between 70 and 150 characters.
- Write in the second person. Use “you” language to address your audience and maintain a conversational tone.
- Make an offer they cannot refuse. Give your audience what they want. Include a call to action that delivers on that promise and creates some urgency.
- Humor sells. And though it’s not always easy to execute, making your audience smile generally leads to a positive outcome.
Step 5: Post your content organically
With your ads and content created, consider posting that same content to your organic audience on LinkedIn. You may find yourself earning additional followers as a result. Plus, the organic results are a good indicator of what your top performers are. To get a good sample of data, make sure to promote the posts organically for at least two weeks.
Step 6: Promote top performers
At this point in the game, you should have some clear organic winners. Boost their success even further by sponsoring them on LinkedIn. The extra visibility can help you build the additional social proof and backlinks that search engine algorithms love. You can also boost your best-performing organic posts from your LinkedIn Page directly.
Step 7: Measure results
Results: it’s why you run ads in the first place. Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, engagement, time on page, impressions, or any other metric you’re tracking, take a look at your results to see how your ads are performing.
When selecting the metrics you want to measure, double-check that they relate to the goals you outlined in Step 1. This gives you greater insight into how you’re progressing towards achieving your objectives.
Step 8: Test, optimize, repeat
Advertising isn’t a one-and-done marketing tactic. To make sure that you’re getting the most bang for each advertising buck, continue to test and optimize the various elements of your native ads. Try a new headline. Update your call to action. Upload a new image. For each of your tests, follow A/B testing best practices, like testing only one variable at a time and running your tests for at least two weeks.
Step 9: Retarget
Another way to amplify the performance of your native ads on LinkedIn is to take advantage of retargeting. After your audience completes meaningful behaviors (e.g. visiting a specific page on your website or clicking on a specific ad), retarget them with a more specific, relevant ad based on their previous interaction to nurture the relationship.
To start marketing to who matters on LinkedIn, create your own native ad using the advice above.