Eight best practices for your native advertising strategy

Here are eight refined tips to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your native advertising strategy and enjoying the highest levels of consumer engagement. 

According to the Association of National Advertisers, 63 percent of advertisers were planning to increase their native advertising budgets in 2015, bumping up spending to $10.7 billion. That’s an impressive uptick of 150 percent from spend in 2013. Additionally, 72 percent of publishers are currently offering native ads, or planning to within the next several years.

This impressive growth is for good reason – the native ad format performs for advertisers. Native ads result in four times the lift over traditional display ads for branded search activity and six times the lift for generic search activity. The reason this format performs so well for advertisers is because it engages consumers.

In a cross-channel and cross-device world, native formats have the ability to complement any context, whether consumers are on their smartphones or desktop Web browsers. That flexibility pays off; our research has found that over 60 percent of consumers have “positive impressions” of native advertising.

This is due to three key reasons:

1. Consumers say native ads introduce them to new products.
2. Native ads provide information that consumers wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
3. These types of ads also fit naturally within the online experience.

To help marketers effectively use native advertising to its fullest potential, we set out to understand and define the creative best practices associated with this format. We held an in-lab survey of over 800 internet and smartphone users, and used eye-tracking to determine fixations, or momentary pauses of the eye within an area of interest happening long enough for cognitive processing to take place. This extensive research helped us develop eight best practices marketers should follow when incorporating this powerful format into their advertising strategy.

1. Images featuring people

People-based images deliver fixation on PC, and deep engagement and lower-funnel metrics on mobile. Images with people lead to higher brand familiarity, brand affinity, purchase increase, and recommendation increase. Consider leveraging these types of images in your native ads, especially on mobile.

2.  Labels of transparency

When one is new to market, transparency is critical. Native video units benefit from a clear label. In this case, the word “sponsored” leads to increased recall, familiarity, and interaction on all platforms.

3. Symbols as labels

For more established native units, like a native mobile app install ad, you may use a “$” as a label of transparency.  This is a space to watch as consumers become more accustomed to native units.

4. Logos

Don’t shy away from letting your logo shine in your native advertising. On mobile, a logo leads to a 25 percent increase in fixation. Logo presence is very important, and larger logos deliver recall, action, and longer fixation for your ad on multiple platforms.

5. Brand mentions

Brand mentions do not have the same impact as logos, but are still important to include in the headline of your native ad, especially with static image ads. Doing so can lead to a 24 percent increase in aided recall, and 11 percent increase in purchase intent. However, in native advertising, brand mentions in the body of the text do not provide significant changes to brand metrics.

6. Video ads

Native video ads that are about 15 seconds long drive greater recall and purchase intent than longer video units, following the trend seen in general video advertising. Consumers were more likely to fixate on 15-second ads on both PC and mobile; they have shorter patience and are looking for the least disruptive ad experience possible.

7. Auto-start ads

Don’t be afraid to leverage auto-start ads when it comes to native, as it drives a slight increase in brand affinity and outperforms user-initiated ads in recall and fixation.

8. An easy to navigate mobile experience

Ensure that you have a seamless mobile experience in place for the consumer post-click, as users tend to fixate on the “more” button.

In conclusion

Native advertising offers a ton of opportunities for marketers, and there’s a reason it’s been a breakout star in the industry. To ensure you’re making the most out of this impactful ad format, it’s important to be transparent with your audience, leverage people-based images and make sure to strut your logo and brand to encourage recall. As digital video consumption continues to increase, so will the power of short, native video and auto-start ads. Marketers should consider adopting these new formats to keep their brand top-of-mind for consumers.

By: David Iudica, director of strategic insight and research at Yahoo.

As Director, strategic insights and research, David provides support to more than 3000 sales and marketing executives spanning the globe. He is responsible for digital insight initiatives designed to help Yahoo create more meaningful connections between its advertising partners and its consumers. This includes overseeing a group of researchers challenged with providing thought-provoking research to the industry around topics like mobile, video, social, native, and audiences.

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7 Brilliant Tips on Making Effective Facebook Video Ads

Are you looking for better ways to connect with your Facebook audience? The social media king has offered businesses a new alternative in the form of Facebook video ads. Video is a very powerful tool, something we all understand after the success of various YouTube stars. However, all businesses are incorporating these video ads in their marketing campaign. How can you be different? The key to remember is that you can boost your engagement and conversions if you make small adjustments to the way you target and design your Facebook video ads. 

If you aren’t sure of how to go about that, here are some tips that can prove to be immensely useful:

1. Customize according to audience preferences

Instead of focusing on creating content that can work for a wide audience, you should create videos aimed at a specific segment of the audience. When videos are targeted to a certain segment, they are more likely to get clicks, shares, likes and comments that eventually lead back to your website. For instance, rather than creating a general video about your business, it is better if you make one about one of your products. The latter video will get a direct response whereas the former is usually beneficial for branding purposes. If you aren’t sure who your audience is, you can take advantage of Facebook Audience Insights to know your audience based on age, demographic, lifestyle, gender, relationship status etc.

2. Capture the audience’s interest quickly

Successful videos are those that get directly to the point. You have to get through to your audience in the first 5 seconds if you want them to watch the entire video. Make sure you use content that’s attention grabbing as this will keep them hooked till the end. How can you accomplish this? A catchy start can go a long way in luring the audience just like a mysterious one.

Nevertheless, pose the mystery in a way that it incites curiosity instead of boring the viewers. Another way to retain attention is to tell people that you can solve a problem. Facebook videos are muted and the message can only be heard when the user clicks on the audio button. This means that the video has to have a powerful supporting visual to get the users to press the button. Also, don’t get too commercial in the videos because that often puts viewers off.

3. Create advertisements that don’t seem like advertisements

Keep in mind that Facebook is a social platform, which means that people usually visit it when they want to know what their friends are up to or taking a break. Buying things is not really their aim when they log onto Facebook. Therefore, if you wish to attract the attention of users, you have to be subtle about it. This means that you need to deliver your message in an unusual way like funny content or insightful information. While this may not be easy, but this can help you in making some great videos that can keep your audience entertained and get your message across as well.

4. Don’t forget the message or runtime of the video

Even though you may prefer lengthy videos, your audience isn’t going to be pleased. If you want them to sit through the entire video, you have to keep it snappy and short. Long videos can bore your audience easily because there is just so much to do on Facebook. Experts recommend that you should make short videos that aren’t longer than 30 seconds. Only if your video provides value to the users or is entertaining, you can think about going as long as 2 minutes. Longer videos only work in special circumstances. The safest way to decide the runtime and message of the video is to think about who you are addressing, what you are offering, where the product is available and why it is important to use the product.

5. Make separate videos for different segments

Can you show the same video to a newcomer and one to your old and loyal customer? Definitely not! There are different messages you need to convey to each of these segments and you cannot simply make a standardized video to accomplish this goal. When you are targeting new or potential customers, you need videos that build brand awareness and generate interest in your products and services. However, when you are engaging with users who are already customers, you need to highlight other avenues of your products and services to ensure their loyalty. You need to offer them value if you want them to stay.

6. Run tests for optimizing the videos

It is definitely not a good practice to make a single video and then just repeat it over and over again. It is better for you to make two versions of each video and test them separately on the audience to know which one has a more powerful impact and generates a good response. You can simply change just one variable in the video or make completely different ones with the same message. Sometimes, even a single element can make a huge difference in the response you get from your audience.

7. Combine music, voiceover and visuals

When you are making videos for Facebook, you need to think about how you will deliver your message. As videos are mute and they stop when users move onto other posts, you have to prompt your customers to press the audio button by compelling them to look at the first few seconds. Once they can hear the video, you need to keep them engaged. The first frames of the video and the text should be convincing enough to open audio and the rest of the content should have appropriate music, visuals and voiceover to pull them through.

When you keep these tips in mind, you will be able to devise effective Facebook video ads. 

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