Advertorials and Native Ads
Articles, social media posts, videos – native ads come in many forms. Data indicate that businesses large and small are opting for native ads for 56% of their online advertising. Lime’s digital marketing experts plan, conceptualise, and execute native campaigns to help you fulfil objectives ranging from awareness to consideration and conversions.
What are native ads?
Native ads are advertisements that are designed to closely match the aesthetics and subject matter of the medium or publication in which they appear. Due to this consonance, native ads are often rated by consumers as less bothersome; they also are more effective with certain marketing objectives.
Businesses use native ads to communicate to consumers who are already consuming content and receptive to new messages.
Types of native advertising
Native ads can be in the following formats:
- In-Feed Units
- Paid Search Units
- Recommendation Widgets
- Promoted Listings
- In-Ad with Native Elements
- Custom Contextual Ads
What is the difference between display advertising and native advertising?
Nowadays, most social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, have come to format ads on their platforms to visually very closely resemble other “organic” or non-advertising content. As a result, some marketers like to categorise the “in-feed” ad units on such social platforms as native ads.
However, similarity of form is just one of the required attributes for a native ad. The other – similarity in function – is just as important. So, while a display ad that pops in a person’s Facebook feed may be formatted like a regular post, its contents often have nothing to do with the sort of content that a user might otherwise expect to find.
In contrast, if you are browsing the website of National Geographic, for example, and you come across a sponsored native ad about the most spectacular wildlife safari destinations in the world – or, for instance, an ad on a business news website about the best stocks to invest in – the ad is in congruence both in style and substance.
These differences between display and native ads make them suited for slightly different marketing objectives, as summarised below.
| Display Ads | Native ads |
| Sticks out as advertising | Blends in with editorial content |
| Relatively low click-through rates | Relatively high click-through rates |
| Lower cost per click | Higher cost per click |
| Most effective for brand visibility and retargeting campaigns | Most effective for bottom-of-funnel objectives and driving traffic to websites |
Some examples of native ads
At Lime, we craft native ad campaigns that boost your brand credibility through visibility on reputed, high-profile websites. Our friendly RFQ tool lets you request a quote in a matter of minutes. If you’re unsure of the right ad strategy for your brand, our digital marketing specialists offer expert advice on the campaign mix best suited to your specific business goals.