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Tag: social media advertising

  • The Future of Native Ads

    The Future of Native Ads

    Image Source: oDesk

    Native advertising has been called ‘ads dressed as content’. It is slowly changing the face of ads in the digital space. Native advertising has not only spawned a host of new ad types, it has also captured marketers’ fancy due to its ROI capabilities.

    In this blog post, we attempt to answer the following questions with respect to native advertising:

    • Why are publishers focusing on native advertising?
    • What is influencing the growth of native advertising today?
    • What is it being used for?
    • What does the future hold for native ads?

    Native Advertising to the Rescue

    The rise of native advertising will compensate media publishers who have been hit by dwindling print ad revenues. According to eMarketer, US print ad revenues will reduce from $32.16 billion this year to $31.29 billion in 2018; digital ad spending on newspapers and magazines will increase from $7.48 billion in 2014 to $8.41 billion by 2018. This shift in ad dollars is encouraging media publishers to turn towards native advertising.

    Drivers of Growth

    Web users have become so used to seeing display ads that they overlook them very easily as soon as they identify them as ads. The increasing immunity of consumers to regular display ads has prompted advertisers to adopt native advertising to regain consumers’ lost interest. Designed in the format of the host site’s content, native ads blend in to the content and lure users into engagement.

    Social media has quickly adapted to native ads’ format (for example, Facebook’s newsfeed redesign). Understandably, native ad spending is strongly focused on social media platforms. However, native ads are also flourishing on content portals, news properties, video sharing sites and streaming services, wherever fresh content is to be found.

    As per a BIA/Kelsey research, native ad spends will continue to grow in the coming years driven by mobile devices. As more people take to mobile devices, marketers will increase their focus on mobile marketing and native advertising.

    The Usage of Native Advertising

    According to the eMarketer study mentioned above, the top 3 reasons brands are using native advertising on mobile devices are for:

    • Raising awareness
    • Branding
    • Brand affinity

    Other lead-related reasons like purchase intent and customer acquisition come later in the list of priority reasons. Brand native advertising on mobile devices is more a branding exercise than a sales initiative.

    The Road Ahead

    Despite being a relatively new concept in digital marketing, native advertising has grown considerably and is poised for further growth.

    According to the BIA/Kelsey report mentioned above, in 2014, marketers plan to spend $3.1 billion on native ads in social networks. Growth projections for native ad spending are pegged at a significant 42.4% in 2014. Native advertising offers an interesting opportunity for brands who want consumers to engage with them and they are putting money on this opportunity.

    Have you tried native ads? What is your opinion about them?

  • LinkedIn or Facebook: Where should you advertise?

    Facebook and Linkedin AdsLet’s face a fact.

    Both Facebook and LinkedIn are possibly the best advertising platforms digitally, not only socially. Want to target the mass, Facebook’s CPM rates are a boon for you and looking to target the CEOs and CIOs of the world, head to LinkedIn. This is basically how the world loves to classify social media advertising, which may not entirely be wrong.

    With minimum spending caps being ridiculously low as compared to traditional websites (news sites being the favorite), Facebook and LinkedIn have heralded a new dawn of reaching people. We’re not letting in Twitter in this discussion as the price points, reach capability and available audience type are very different as compared to the two in focus here.

    So as a digital marketer, where should you be heading to? What’s the best that you can tap in your available budget, objective and time frame? Let’s see which platform fits the bills in these three criterions:

    1. Budget
      At the very outset, let’s spill the beans that Facebook is far more affordable than LinkedIn. This can be safely said at least in the CPC and CPM factors. LinkedIn is still a couple of times more expensive than Facebook. There is a very critical reason here; LinkedIn is still a smaller and more focused community. Facebook is huge and really diverse, which gets the luxury advertising concept, that focus is expensive and mass is cheaper always. Want to target a niche segment or audience similar to your current customers? Spend more and go for LinkedIn. Want to build a huge brand affordably and by huge we mean, in terms of eyes only? Go for Facebook.
    2. Objective
      Brand building has traditionally been Facebook’s forte owing to its CPM capability and affordable rates. Brand reach and customer positioning is LinkedIn biggest win, thanks to designations and place of work data availability and correctness.
    3. Time-frame
      This is where Facebook wins hands down. There is a famous digital saying that you can become a Facebook hero in a few hours, overnight is passé. Basically, get a thousand dollars, divide it 80:20 to CPM and CPC respectively, set a time frame of two weeks and you might just be called to the next industry summit, all thanks to Facebook. LinkedIn, on the other hand, takes it slow but does the job really well. You need to hit the CEOs and stay exclusive, LinkedIn will do it so perfectly that there’s a possibility that no one below B-level would ever know of your brand.

    Plan your advertising platform smartly. It’s not always what messaging you put across; it needs to be on the right platform as well.

    Image Source: Screaming Lunatic Design Agency