With recent data-powered performance results trending in favor of native advertising, display ads face a questionable future. Business Insider reported that native ads will drive 74 percent of ad revenue in the U.S. by 2021. In today’s digital space, the benefits of native advertising over display are becoming increasingly apparent.
It’s easy to assume that the only reason native ads currently wield power is their ability to seamlessly blend into website content. While this is certainly an advantage, there’s a broader spectrum of factors boosting native’s relevance.
We took a closer look and charted out 6 critical reasons why native advertising has, and will continue to, grab display’s revenue share:
1. Ad-Blocking
According to a PageFair study, adblock usage grew 30 percent in 2016, resulting in 236 million desktop devices and 380 million mobile devices adopting adblock. This trend has played a primary role in the decline of display advertising. With the launch of Google Chrome’s rigorous ad-blocking technology in February 2018, display has even more cause for concern. The feature is likely to prevent display ads from showing up on placements that have a large number of ads running via AdSense. As users strive for a more organic, non-intrusive web experience, native increasingly becomes the ad format of choice and display inches closer to irrelevancy.
2. Breaking Banner Blindness
“Banner blindness” is an incredibly rampant trend plaguing digital advertising through recent years. It’s a developed user-tendency to naturally ignore banner ads because the human eye became used to seeing them consistently, on a daily basis, for years. Native ads, which focus heavily on content marketing, inevitably draw attention by creating a dialogue with the user. A study by ShareThrough shows that users actively view native ads 52 percent more frequently than display ads.
3. Building Brand Credibility
One goal that is common for many brands or businesses is to build industry credibility and thought leadership. ShareThrough’s statistics show that native ads drive 9 percent greater brand affinity and 18 percent greater purchase intent than display ads. Native ads also augment brand favorability significantly more than display ads. With these impressive numbers supporting native’s brand-specific capabilities, businesses find it profitable to invest in this advertising model more than they would in display.
4. Relaying More Information
Display ads accommodate limited text-based information in their format. Most brand messaging required the flexibility to relay the requisite amount of information, which can be more easily achieved through native advertising.
5. Format Flexibility
Native ads give advertisers the flexibility to test varying formats for most elements of the ad. Different combinations of graphics and headlines can be much more easily implemented than with display ads, which have drastic limitations.
6. Evolving Programmatic Technology
Programmatic advertising continues to boom in the digital marketing space in a big way and is expected to revolutionize the industry in the years to come. Additionally, technology supporting programmatic advertising evolved in leaps and bounds, and becomes more sophisticated by the day. This powerful ad delivery system is most compatible with the native advertising format. This combination of programmatic and native advertising is expected to solve major marketing problems like the ad and content experience disconnect.
There you have it! Native is the advertising solution of today…and tomorrow. Need a strategic digital partner to help leverage native advertising for your business? Check out our work and drop me a line at [email protected].