So, have you been on the internet for the past two hours desperately trying to figure out the answer to the question “What exactly is native advertising?“

It can be simply defined as a form of online advertisement that matches the function and form of the platform on which it appears. As CMI’s chief strategy advisor, Robert Rose explains, “Native advertising is a paid/third-party advertising format that supports either brand or direct-response goals, and is where the content matches the form, feel, function, and quality of the content of the media on which it appears.“

For the past few years, there has been a lot of buzz and excitement around the subject. However, despite all the hype, for most marketers, native advertising is still a fuzzy concept.

As per a status report by Copyblogger,

• 49 percent of respondents said they do not have a clue about native advertising
• 24 percent of the people were hardly familiar with it
• Another 24 percent confirmed that they were somewhat familiar with the term
• And only 3 percent of the respondents knew its intricacies

Taking into account this lack of awareness, I felt it would be a good idea to walk you through some of the most significant features of native advertising at first. I’m also going to discuss how you can successfully optimize your native advertising to generate maximum leads.

Some Of The Signifying Features Of Native Advertising

Most marketers feel that native advertising is equivalent to content marketing. However, that is precisely why their native advertising campaigns go haywire.Content marketing is a strategic technique of creating and distributing relevant, valuable, and promotional content about your brand’s services to attract a clearly defined customer base. However, native advertising does not talk about services or products blatantly but involve a subtle approach.

Two most crucial features of native advertising are:

• It serves as a direct paid opportunity: In the case of native advertising, you simply “pay to play.” The brands pay for the placement of content on various platforms that are outside of their own media.
• It takes into account the customer’s preferences: It’s quite common for a reader to express anguish over too many ads appearing in magazines, newspapers and online blogs. But native advertisement keeps them engaged with your brand and don’t disrupt users’ experience as it tends to look almost similar to the third parties content. It does not impede with the normal behavior of a user in a particular channel at all.

Therefore, instead of getting intimidated, customers actually enjoy reading the information. So, as you see, besides focusing on improving your website contents, it also becomes essential to optimize your native advertising strategies to maximize revenues.

How To Optimize Your Content For Native Advertising

One of the best ways tomake the most out of your native advertising is to see it as a breakthrough from fixed ad-positions at the top, side columns or the bottom of a page. Your fundamental focus should be on making it a part of the user ‘natural activity stream’. The sole purpose of a reader to go through a newspaper or website is to gain more information and data. Thus, it becomes essential to think of innovative ways to keep the readers engaged in your native ads campaigns.

Here are some techniques that will help you to ensure that your Native Ads stand out from the crowd every time.

Have a journalistic bend of mind

Just like narrating news or a story, you must take a journalistic approach to draft your native ads.It must convey a compelling story that attracts and engagesyour readers. It must be supported by data, images and quotes from a reliable authority so that, the readers perceive it as a piece of vital news and share extensively.

Also, publications and websites are not the only places where you can promote your native advertising. Try opting for PR sites (like PRnewwire, PrLog, Businesswire) which are visited by eminent journalists, blog publishers and editors. These websites have a global reach and are pioneers of commercial news distribution all over the world. This worldwide reach will give you a beneficial edge over your competitors as well.

Pay attention to the quality and relevance of the ads

Your native ads must have the following qualities; it should be

• Innovative
• Creative
• Authentic
• Newsworthy
• And also relevant to the content-context

For example, if you are promoting technology-based contents, publish it in a platform that writes on technological innovations instead of publishing it in a sports website, woman’s portal or political news site.

For the best results, visit websites that have top ranking in the search engines and check whether their keyword sets or themes match with yours. Once you identify the perfect publishing partner, it will drive organic traffic to your website long after the campaign has ended. The reason is, the native ad content becomes a part of the ecosystem of the website itself.

Include videos in your native advertising

Social media posts with videos are likely to be circulated by a wide audience base as compared to a text-only or text-with-images feed. According to the experts, in-feed-editorial-videos and auto-play videos are becoming standards in social media. As the success of a native ad is measured by brand lift and completion rates (how many users view the entire ad), markets need to include attractive, engaging and newsworthy video ads that will be shared by a large community of social media users. Social media marketing plays a vital role in advertising.

Include recommendation widgets in your website

Content recommendation widgets that suggest alternate stories will help you to attract the right audience to your brand. Intriguing headlines like “Recommended for you“, “You might like,” “You may have missed” integrated into your homepage will engage the readers who might be looking for more information.

Optimize and analyze the results

You must keep a tab on the quality of your text, relevancy of the videos and data and the success rate of your native ads. If you find sales conversions are not up to the mark, go through your landing page to make sure it is user-friendly. The objective of your native ads will not be just branding but conversation and lead generation as well. Hence, make sure your contract involves a clause that regards‘marketing leads’ as a barometer for the overall performance of the campaign. Once the campaign ends, find whether the publisher has delivered as promised or not. If he has not, you would know where you went wrong and look for better options in the future.

On a parting note, keep in mind that success rates of your native advertising will depend upon the use of appropriate technology. Figure out a platform that has powerful tools and excellent customer engagement functionality. Once you deliver highly targeted regular content and as well as focused sponsored ads to a pre-qualified audience, you will observe excellent success with your native ads in no time.