Sharethrough

Sharethrough Scales Up Its Native Ads

Tom — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:29:57 +0000

One of native advertising’s biggest proponents, San Francisco-based ad tech startup Sharethrough, claims to have found a way to reconcile non-standardization and scale. “Native advertising version one was about how make it work. Native advertising version two is about how to make it scale,” said Sharethrough CEO Dan Greenberg..

Sharethrough Introduces Mobile Native Ad Platform

Tom — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:06:14 +0000

Now Sharethrough, a company whose technology enables companies to create and manage native ads, has launched a product that it claims makes it easier for brands to publish native ads on mobile. The company says that its new Sharethrough Mobile platform allows brands to promote sponsored content within the stream of a publisher’s mobile site, automatically giving the ads the look and feel of each site they appear on.

Marketers Should Pay More Attention to Native Ads

Tom — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:00:10 +0000

Are native ads “consumed” the same way Web surfers consume editorial content? Buoyed by new eye-tracking research from the IPG Media Lab, the native ad sellers at Sharethrough are making that bold claim.

Study Shows Native Ads Outperform Banners…Mostly

Tom — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:54:10 +0000

In a study by IPG Media Labs and Sharethrough, subjects were 25% more likely to look at a native ad than they were at a banner, and they looked at them 53% more frequently, checking them out 4.1 times per session on average, versus 2.7% for banners.

Sharethrough launches a new solution to make mobile ads look and feel more native

Tom — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:49:29 +0000

With Sharethrough Mobile, advertisers can take their articles, posts, reviews, videos, and other pieces of original content and promote it on mobile web browsers.

We’ve Gone Mobile: Introducing Sharethrough Mobile

chris — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:47:31 +0000

We are very excited to announce the launch of Sharethrough Mobile Sponsored Stories, a technology solution to power native ads across the mobile web. We’ve been hard at work for many months testing and iterating on this platform, aiming to deliver a product that will make a significant impact on solving the problem of mobile monetization and brand advertising on the mobile web. We believe that today’s options for mobile advertising don’t provide a user experience that matches the quality of the phenomenal devices we hold in our pockets, nor do they provide publishers with a simple way to integrate brands into their content experience. With the launch of this new Sharethrough offering, we believe that things are about to change. (See here to try it out for yourself).

A number of industry leading publishers, including PEOPLE, Serious Eats and Forbes, are already using the Sharethrough mobile platform to power native ads on their mobile websites.

Pepsi ®, one of our mobile launch brand partners, shared some thoughts on why Sharethrough Mobile Sponsored Stories is important to them:

“At Pepsi, we strongly believe in creating advertising that is genuinely entertaining and promoting our content through ways that are respectful to our audience,” said Josh Nafman, Sr. Digital Brand Manager, Pepsi ®. “Sharethrough’s mobile platform will help Pepsi reach audiences in a way that upholds our values of engagement and compelling advertising experiences. We’re excited for this new channel to connect with our fans on their mobile devices.”

We are also working with leading brands including Cruzan® Rum, Sauza® Tequila, and Pepsi. Both Cruzan Rum and Sauza Tequila will be using the Sharethrough mobile platform to reach engaged audiences for their entertaining video campaigns, including Sauza Tequila’s irresistible “Make It With a Lifeguard,” video series. “With Mobile Internet usage on the rise, Sauza’s excited to be one of the first brands to test Sharethrough’s Native advertising distribution method specifically in driving consumers to watch our ‘Make It With a Lifeguard’ videos,” said Lindsey Lewis, Brand Manager, Jim Beam Inc. We are thrilled to provide engaging content whenever and wherever our fans want.”

So how does it work?
Sharethrough Mobile Sponsored Stories allow brands to promote their original content, such as videos, articles, posts, reviews and more, across mobile sites in a scalable way that respects and enhances the user experience of each site. Mobile Sponsored Stories appear as part of the stream of content within a publisher’s mobile site experience and are automatically updated to match the look-and-feel of the organic site content. This allows advertisers to promote their content in placements across the mobile web that feel native to each site they appear on.

How do you make ads look and feel native?
Real Time Templating (RTT) a technology that Sharethrough developed, allows our advertising platform to identify the style elements of any webpage and match each ad to those attributes, in real time. Even better, we are able to match any future updates to the style template, so even if a publisher changes their design, your ad will stay consistent with the new style elements.

Are these ads effective?
In a word, yes. The Sharethrough solution was built to work in a “scroll-centric” environment, it does not interrupt mobile site usage – which according to Forrester is users’ most frequently requested mobile ad feature. Our mobile ads are ideally suited to the smaller screen size of mobile devices, where there is less real estate for content and advertising to run adjacently. Sharethrough Mobile Sponsored Stories enables brand messages to stand out among the site content, with up to one-third of the entire screen dedicated to brand content.

Our Vision
The launch of Mobile Sponsored Stories marks a big leap for Sharethrough and the native advertising industry at large. Our goal is to be the leading provider of native ad products across all platforms and to create technology that makes advertising better – today we feel just a little closer to that vision. If you’d like to learn more about our mobile advertising solutions, please click here.

INFOGRAPHIC: Native Advertising Effectiveness Study by IPG Media Lab and Sharethrough

Tom — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:36:33 +0000

Over the past several months, we have worked with IPG Media Lab to complete the industry’s first native ad effectiveness study using both eye-tracking and survey-based techniques. The goal of the study was to measure visual attention and brand lift for native ads from top brands, including National Geographic, Southern Comfort, and a premium travel brand in comparison to traditional display ads. After surveying 4,770 consumers and using eye-tracking technology on 200 consumers, some of the more telling statistics were:

Consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than display ads.
25% more consumers were measured to look at in-feed native ad placements (the most common editorial native ad format) than display ad units.
Native ads registered 18% higher lift in purchase intent and 9% lift for brand affinity responses than banner ads
32% of respondents said the native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend of family member” versus just 19% for display ads.

To see full results take a look at the infographic below.

Yahoo! Joins the Native Party

Tom — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:41:21 +0000

Late last year we made a few predictions about the native advertising market, and one of them was that Yahoo would roll out a native ad solution. So today’s announcement of Yahoo! Stream Ads makes us at Sharethrough feel a little Nate Silver-esque. We also noted that native would be the answer to mobile, so it comes as no surprise that Yahoo will feature Stream Ads on their mobile application. In addition to our predictions, we offered Yahoo suggestions for a native redesign, which included several takes on Yahoo native ads. In the redesign piece, our CEO, Dan Greenberg, noted one major reason why Yahoo was the prime candidate to “go native”:

“Yahoo’s undeniable strength is content. From Sports to News to Entertainment, Yahoo has far exceeded any other Silicon Valley company’s efforts to build loyal audiences through original content. There could not be a better time for Yahoo to go native with content-driven advertising. Brands are investing unprecedented budgets in their own original content and publishing efforts, and are in deep need of new mediums to promote this branded content in native ways.”

Ok, enough with the back-patting. The main reason for this post is to welcome Yahoo to the native party. Their inclusion is a large step for the entire digital advertising industry and a very important stamp of approval from one of the largest media companies. We look forward to additional publishers and media heavy weights following their lead.

From the 1st ever Native Advertising Summit, to an increase in branded custom content, to today’s announcement, 2013 has been a big year for native. To reflect that growth, we plan on rolling out another version of the Native Adscape, which offers the only all-inclusive view of companies, technologies, and publishers involved in the native movement.

Until next time, stay native, friends.

Which Genres of Branded Video Work Best?

Tom — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:43:21 +0000

We know why people share content online. Studies have revealed the reasons. Roughly speaking, we share content because (1) we want to amaze and entertain our friends; (2) we want to reveal aspects of our true selves to friends so as to build stronger relationships; and (3) we want to help people by providing them with valuable information and insight. Read more:

Native Video Ads More Effective Than Pre-Roll Ads

Tom — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:37:17 +0000

A recent study by Sharethrough and Nielsen shows that native video ads are more effective at increasing brand lift than pre-roll ads.