This is a guest post from Edwin Wong, Senior Director, B2B Strategic Research & Insights at Yahoo.
A new study delves into the native ad opportunity and offers marketers best practices for creating native campaigns with Yahoo Gemini, the first unified marketplace for mobile search and native advertising. With Yahoo Gemini, advertisers get the performance and ease of search, combined with the scale and creativity of native advertising. By bringing the two together, advertisers can now buy, manage and optimize their mobile search and native ad spend in one place — driving greater performance and higher impact for their businesses and brands.
Native ads are hot right now and it’s easy to see why. According to our research, more than 60 percent of consumers have a favorable view of native ads.¹ Publishers have caught on to this, with 72 percent currently offering native ads, or planning to within the next several years.² So where does this leave advertisers? In 2015, 79 percent of advertisers plan to buy native ads.³ Yahoo’s new study, The Native Advertising Frontier, digs deeper into this surging format, providing marketers with helpful insights and best practices.
According to the study, the three keys to native advertising success are:
1. Selecting the right platform: Make sure your content is aligned with the purpose, tone and visual style of the site you choose. Our studies show that an effectively integrated native ad generated three times more attention than a less integrated placement. People spent almost as much time looking at the native ad as they did on the actual articles.4
2. Adding value for users: If users find the content informative and in line with their interests, they’ll read and share it, even if it is presented by a brand. This has been proven true on Yahoo Food, where 52 percent of users say promoted advertising content helped them learn more about cooking.5
3. Being transparent: Native content that is identified as sponsored, clearly branded and includes a distinct call to action performs best. When native ads are unmistakably denoted as advertising, they set the proper expectations for the user, and ultimately create a better experience. We tested the impact of adding a more prominent logo and stronger call to action to an ad, and saw significant improvements in favorability and purchase intent. Additionally, 66% of respondents said the native ad with prominent logo represented a great experience. 6
To learn more about how Yahoo can help you drive business results with mobile search and native advertising through Yahoo Gemini, contact Marin. Thanks to recent enhancements, it’s easier than ever before to create, optimize and track your Yahoo Gemini campaigns with Marin Software.
About the Author
Edwin Wong is Senior Director, B2B Strategic Research & Insights at Yahoo.
Sources
1. Yahoo/Ipsos Consumer Perceptions About In-Feed Ads, August, 2013
2. Native Advertising Report: Native Advertising Perceptions & Trends, Advertiser Perceptions, July 2014
3. Mixpo "Native Advertising Survey," September 2014
4. Ad Environments- The Halo Effect, Yahoo & Innerscope, September 2014
5. Yahoo/MillwardBrown Digital Native Content Marketing Advertising Effectiveness Study, April 2014
6. Yahoo/Ipsos CPG Gemini Mobile Native Advertising Effectiveness Study, via Forced Exposure, October 2014
