Here are 5 really smart ways to sell your advertisers on the native ad opportunity:

 

1. Native ads are useful to readers

Here’s the challenge: consumers want advertisers’ content to be useful to them. Respondents deemed 60 percent of the content they received as “poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver,” an alarming rate of ineffectiveness, the agency said. The more effective the content, the greater the impact on consumers’ well-being and the better the business results.

2. Native ads capture attention

Readers spend more time engaged with a native ad than with other types of ads – or even with editorial content. Through the years, The Post and Courier has seen routine reader engagement times of 5 minutes and longer for its native ads. The average reader time for a typical news story on a mobile device: 123 seconds, according to Pew Research Center.

3. Native ads are highly social

Native advertising, clearly labeled as sponsored content, is useful, honest content that lives comfortably on your newspaper’s social media feed. Unlike other forms of digital advertising, native ads can be shared and collect likes and comments on social platforms. The benefits of this social exposure for a native advertiser with an authentic, original story to tell can be immense.  

4. Native ads rock mobile

Popups, banners and pre-roll video ads that slow the online experience can frustrate the majority of your readership who use smartphones and tablets to access your website. Plus, native ads deliver measurably better results. Facebook’s mobile-only newsfeed ads massively outperform older, right-side desktop ads, with click-through rates that are 187 percent higher, according to a study by Marin Software.  

5. Native ads don’t get blocked

Because they are formatted to complement, not interrupt, editorial content, native ads can’t be stopped by ad blockers. Don’t underestimate the threat. The use of ad-blocking software increased 30 percent last year, according to PageFair. About 11 percent of internet users globally use the software to block digital ads, an equivalent of 600 million devices.