The Age of Native Advertising and Why You Need Zemanta

Posted on Wednesday, 14. November 2018 in category Digital marketing. 4 min read • Written by

The Age of Native Advertising and Why You Need Zemanta
Sabina Bevc

The digital world is evolving, and it’s happening fast. You think your digital strategy is pitch-perfect because you have your Facebook and Google ads all set up but you couldn’t be more wrong. Have you heard of Zemanta? Have you wondered what it is, how it works and if you need it? We’re going to go through all these points, don’t worry. But first we’ll take a look at advertising changes we’re witnessing and explain why Zemanta is one of the best tools to consider in your digital strategy.

Big Changes in Online Advertising Arising

There are big changes occurring in the world of advertising and we all have to think out of the box when creating our digital strategy. Your audience has had enough of conventional digital advertising and can no longer stand the constant presence of “flashy banners” following every step they take online. Ad blockers are on the rise and display advertising is slowly losing its power. In the beginning of 2017 PageFair reported that there are over 600 million devices around the world equipped with ad-blocking software – 380 million smartphones or tablets and 236 million desktop devices. Of course, this number is higher year by year. Communicating your message to your target audience has therefore become quite hindered and it’s time (if you haven’t done so already) to start changing your online presence.

I started off pretty negatively, but there are some solutions that can improve your online presence.  I’ll explain in the next few steps!

Native Content Advertising to the Rescue

First, it’s important to understand the difference between content marketing and native content advertising, since these two terms often get mistaken for the same thing. Content marketing is an ongoing process that is integrated into the whole marketing campaign and is primarily focused on nourishing the lead as part of a long-term process with conversion as the end result. It includes content in the form of whitepapers, videos, blogs, newsletters and how-to guides. You can read more about this here. 

Native content advertising on the other hand, is a type of content that’s designed to fit seamlessly into the content that surrounds it. The content is created to engage with the readers and thus contains useful and relevant information; it is placed on someone else’s domain, not on a company’s website – it’s actually a paid advertisement. When done right, native advertising doesn’t feel like an advertisement and users are more likely to interact with it, especially since you are able to offer them a solution or advice through your content and then subtly redirect them to your website. But really take the time to create quality content; this is the number one rule with native advertising! Only then will you be able to get audience clicks and the results you’re looking for.

Let’s see some of the examples that might be an inspiration for you:

  • Eni, the oil and energy conglomerate, did this great piece on the Green River Project in the Niger Delta. Through this content, it succeeded in projecting itself more as an environmental agency, rather than an oil company.

Another possibility of native content advertising is doing native ads programmatically which means automated media buying that enables you effective targeting and audience insights for further optimization. To simplify: it’s a technique designed to incorporate your messages in a publisher’s feed, according to user’s behavior and interests. Personalized ads are a much more efficient way of getting your message to the desired audience.

 Personalized ads are a much more efficient way of getting your message to the desired audience.

According to recent statistics, “Ad Fatigue” is smaller when using native ads, as users do not get fed up as they would with traditional display ads; the latter is very relevant in terms of content. In 53% of cases, users are more inclined towards native ads than display ads and (I saved the best for last) native ads influence the rise of purchasing intent by 18%!

Also, we mustn’t forget that mobile-first should become our priority way of thinking when designing a user experience, and native advertising is a big part of this. BI Intelligence has estimated that native ads will account for 63% of mobile ad revenue by 2020, up from 53% in 2016. 

Convinced yet? Here’s a tool that can help you get started with native content advertising and reach your goals.

What Zemanta Is and Why You Need It

Zemanta is a part of Outbrain, the world’s leading performance-driven discovery and native advertising platform. It is an omnichannel programmatic native Demand Side Platform (DSP) for media agencies to automate paid content promotion across 25+ programmatic networks. The advantage of Zemanta’s Demand Side Platform (DSP) system is that the algorithm predicts and takes account of the user’s involvement in auction space in the inventory. In simple terms, it is more user-friendly and a less aggressive way of advertising, because these native ads appear while the user’s reading and are completely blended with the content of the website, thus not interrupting the reading experience (ads do not appear in the form of pop-ups or interruptions of video content with ads) which is often the case in traditional digital advertising.

Here’s an example of Zemanta’s success story, when it partnered with a multinational beverage corporation. Zemanta indexed and deployed over 600 articles across desktop, tablet and mobile, and succeeded in substantially lowering the CPC and bounce rate.

The perfect timing to collaborate with Zemanta is in the mid-funnel phase, when users are already familiar with your company and products but still need to evaluate you. I especially recommend the use of native content advertising if you are selling products that usually have a longer purchasing process. And remember, you advertise your content, not the product directly, so make sure your landing page consists of high-quality, engaging and informative content.

I hope some of these insights gave you motivation to try thinking differently about your online performance and will help you achieve your goals. Have you tried Zemanta already? I would love to hear your experience!

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