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Native Advertising Explained at South By Southwest

Our CEO, Dan Greenberg, met with Mashable’s Lauren Drell at South by Southwest (SXSW) last week.  The above interview hits on several important points, including how we define native, the importance of branded content, and how Sharethrough fits into the native conversation. Here are a few key quotes:

On defining native, “We have always defined native as taking whatever core form or function of the site is and using that to define the advertising that shows up on the site. On YouTube a native ad format is a promoted video, and on Twitter the native content unit is a promoted Tweet.”

On Sharethrough’s role, “Facebook and Twitter are doing what we call ‘native advertising.’ What Sharethrough is doing is bringing that same type of native ad format and native ad technology to the rest of the internet (more traditional publishers).”

On branded content, “Branded content and native are two sides of the same coin. You have to start with content before you talk about anything native. If you try to push bad advertisements through anything native it totally fails. So you have to have branded content and then you can use native ad formats to scale it beyond just the walled gardens of whatever platform is started on.”

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Yesterday Was Officially “Mock Native Advertising Day”

On Monday, The Atlantic ran a sponsored post from the much-maligned Church of Scientology, which was subsequently picked up by Gawker, mocked, and shared across the interwebs.  Since then, The Atlantic has pulled down the post, but not before spoofs appeared on The Onion and TechCrunch, among others.  While the entire web used yesterday as “Mock Native Advertising Day”, we wanted to use our blog to do the opposite. Instead of focusing on why this particular sponsored post was received so poorly, we wanted to highlight a few publishers (including The Atlantic) and brands that have implemented sponsored content in a meaningful way. In a new category like native advertising, mistakes will happen, but growing pains are bound to happen in every industry.

The most important part of successful sponsored content integration, whether it’s a video, post or another format, is that it is relevant to the publisher’s audience.  A post about Scientology may not work for The Atlantic, but on other sites it may be the perfect piece of sponsored content. With that in mind, below are five pieces of sponsored content that were excellent matches for the audiences of the respective publications in which they appeared:

Mashable/IBM – The Rise of Mobile Shopping
Audience: Business professionals, entrepreneurs, technology enthusiasts

 

Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Is” Tumblr
Audience: Teens, young professionals, females

 

The Atlantic/IBM – Why Social Media Matters For Your Business
Audience: Business professionals, marketing managers, social media enthusiasts, technology enthusiasts

 

 Men’s Journal/Land Rover – Remote & Refined
Audience:  Males, affluent individuals, car enthusiasts

 

Slate/Mini – Hipster Roadtrip
Audience: Males, entrepreneurs, affluent individuals

 

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Native Advertising Round-Up: Sharethrough Sponsored Videos, The Atlantic’s Native Solution, and a lot of Conversation

It was a big week for us over here at Sharethrough, as we launched our native video advertising platform, Sharethrough Sponsored Videos. Below are five articles that detail the launch of our platform and the impact that scalable native advertising solutions stand to have on the media industry.

In addition to our announcement, this week was also a good time to look at the growing conversation around native (as Mashable did here).  Whenever a new advertising term or concept emerges there is an innate desire to immediately place it in a box, and in some cases, illegitimatize it as another buzzword.  A consistent thread of the native ad debate has been its relationship to content marketing and advertorials. Both of these marketing strategies can be a part of a native advertising campaign, but where native advertising is fundamentally differentiated from advertorials and custom content marketing is the issue of scale. Native advertising is a media solution that allows advertisers to promote their original content in native placements across many publishers, not just on a single customized editorial placement. Whether it is a sponsored playlist, an in-feed status update, or a video placed within a branded post (see the Media Post article for the different types publisher layouts that support native), native encompasses a new channel in media distribution that allows brands to be a part of a publisher’s core experience, at scale.

And we are just getting started. Major publishers including The Atlantic’s and USA Today have kicked off significant redesigns and native strategies that foreshadow where the online media industry is heading at large.

We hope you enjoy the articles below, and we hope these lead you to many other native discoveries!

Sincerely,

Your Sharethrough Team

 

Sharethrough Sponsored Videos Announcement

TechCrunch – Sharethrough Unveils Its Sponsored Videos Platform To Deliver Native Ads
Forbes – Sharethrough’s Sponsored Videos Bringing Branded Content To Websites, Apps
AdWeek – Sharethrough Promises Video Ads That Look Like Content
MediaPost – Video Ads Go Native with Sharethrough
Venture Beat – Native ads go mainstream with ShareThrough Sponsored Videos

Defining Native

Mashable – What Is ‘Native Advertising’? Depends Who You Ask

Publishers

MediaPost – The Future of Media: Going Native in Grids, Feeds, and Galleries
Digiday – The Atlantic Tries Native Ads

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Native Advertising Round-Up: Agency Teams Shift Towards Native; Digg’s Relaunch, Google’s Wildfire Acquisition, and Facebook’s Promoted Posts Drive Headlines

Is your team ready to take on native? Whether it is producers who can create excellent branded content or real-time copywriters who can work on the fly, there are clear signs that show agency dynamics are fundamentally shifting. In a Sharethrough-authored article on AdAge, we breakdown the reasons behind this shift as well as the type of roles that will help drive native content moving forward. For many of the companies below, these types of roles are already being examined, and in some cases, filled.

Additionally, while most of us have been busy watching the Olympics this week, the trio of Facebook, Digg and Google have been busy making headlines.

Don’t call it a comeback — this week Digg launched their new, advertisement-free site. By removing all ads (both native and display), Digg is making a decision to refocus on their users and rebuild a community base that long ago moved to competitors like Reddit. While their initial plan centers on community building, their clean, image-focused layout hints at a monetization strategy that will be focused solely on native. As Digiday’s Brian Morrissey points out in article below, “For content-based sites like Digg, the banner is unwanted.”

Google got a little bigger this week with its $250 million acquisition of Wildfire. Wildfire, a social marketing company, allows companies to manage their social media campaigns across the Internet. While their ability to offer sophisticated insights into application development and analytics provides tangible value, TechCrunch points out that they do not have the social API relationships to allow them to place ads. Instead, they have an exclusive social ad deal with social start-up, Adaptly. Safe to say that their social advertising M&A acquisitions are far from over….

Speaking of social advertising, Facebook continues to make news after its earnings last week by teeing up their new ad product, “Promoted Posts”. In this model, brands pay per status update based on how many of their followers they want to see the update. This is another attempt by Facebook to segment brands’ followers into groups that they can individually monetize, next up “Targeted Posts” a la Linkedin.

AdAge – The Future Belongs to ‘Native’ Ads, Is Your Agency Ready?

Don Draper may not understand why having a native team is important, but we certainly do. In an age where branded content and native postings are becoming the norm, it is imperative that agency teams stay ahead of the curve. By bringing in new talent that knows how to work within a native environment, agencies can think more creatively, respond to social media suggestions quicker, and pivot to new trends more efficiently. This article does an excellent job breaking down the talent categories that matter.

Digiday – The Aesthetic Pity of Web Advertising

Brian Morrissey does an excellent job breaking down what he calls the “display advertising industrial complex”. In layman’s terms, this essentially means that some form of banners will exist for the foreseeable future because advertisers are already used to dumping billions of dollars into them. Because of the complex, it is even more important for native platforms, like Sharethrough, to continue to find scalable solutions and showcase analytics highlighting the power of native advertising over banners. When you have people like Gawker founder Nick Denton saying he hopes one day his sites won’t run banners, you are on to something.

Mashable – Digg is Back With New App and Site Re-Launch

As discussed in the opening paragraphs, Digg rolled out a new website. By using larger story panes and a cleaner approach, the website looks more polished and is receiving positive feedback. One thing that is interesting to note about the new site is that much more of the content is picked by editors than users. This is very different from previous Digg versions that tried to remain user-centric. However, given that BetaWorks, which owns the news aggregator News.me, acquired Digg; it is no surprise that Digg has taken on more of an editorial voice and has moved further away from purely user-generated content.

TechCrunch – Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?

With the $250 million acquisition of Wildfire, Google made a statement that they consider social a very important part of the future. While AdWords has been a gigantic moneymaker in the search world, gaining access to social data will allow Google to find in-roads within Facebook and Twitter’s ad strategies. Wildfire is an excellent first step for Google, as they can help educate Google on social and begin to think of a strategy around social advertising.

Forbes – Facebook Page Owners Can Pay $500 For 250,000 Eyeballs With ‘Promoted Posts’

While last week was all about their earnings, this week was all about Facebook’s new “Promoted Posts”. Facebook, in essence, has (smartly) decided to charge brands to interact with their followers. While the prices range significantly depending on how many followers you want to engage, brands are now met with a choice every time they have a new link, statement, or video they want to post. Now the waiting game is on to see whether brands consider their Facebook community as valuable as Facebook believes it is.

If you like this round-up and want to receive even more insights into the world of native advertising and branded content, make sure you sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter.

Natively,
Team Sharethrough