Ads are everywhere in today’s world, and nowhere are promotional messages more prevalent than on the Internet. Until recently, online advertisements only came in the form of display units: pop-ups and banner ads that are often intrusive and only distract from the user experience. Today, a growing number of companies are choosing a more seamless, natural approach by creating and running aptly named ‘native ads.’

“Native ads appear around a webpage’s main content with a look and feel that matches the design and layout of the website,” said Ash Nashed, CEO and founder of digital media technology company Adiant. “This design makes the ad simple, unobtrusive and easier to consume than displays ads. We consider native ads a seamless preview to content and offers, and less like an attention-demanding ad that can be disruptive to consumers. These features translate into better engagement with consumers.”

Native advertising is by no means a new concept. The “advertorial” — an advertiser-created piece of content designed to mimic the content a media outlet already produces — has been used in magazines, TV and radio shows for decades. But in the digital world, this type of advertisement takes many forms, and businesses that run native ads need to know which ones will be the right fit for their brand.

Aaron Goodin, CEO of content discovery and engagement platform Snap Skout, explained that there are six types of native ad formats, as published in the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Native Advertising Playbook earlier this year:

• In-feed units, which appear on news outlets and social networks in the form of labeled “sponsor content” or what’s been liked or picked as a favorite by a connection
• Paid search units, in which an advertiser pays to be listed at the top of search engine results for certain keywords
• Recommendation widgets, which pull related content from “around the Web” based on topics and keywords, then list them on the side or bottom of a media outlet’s website
• Promoted listings, which function similarly to paid search units but appear on e-commerce marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon
• In-ad with native element units, which are placed alongside editorial content based on contextually relevant topics and keywords, but link to an offsite page
• Custom units, which are extremely platform-specific, such as customized playlists on Spotify and Pandora

“Each format allows for a simple integration into a user’s experience, which is the brilliance and effectiveness behind native ads,” Goodin said.

Native advertising seems to be particularly effective with millennials, since they’ve grown up surrounded by digital media. Generation Y is quickly becoming one of the largest, most influential and most valuable consumer demographics, and any companies setting their sights on capturing this market should be paying attention to native ads for this reason.

“With younger audiences, having always had the Internet has made them proficient at evaluating content and consuming information quickly,” Nashed told Business News Daily. “Display units have historically distracted their quick consumption habit, which has trained them to consider ads as part of the landscape and not something on which to focus.”

“While the advertisement-averse millennial generation will ignore promos in traditional ad formats, they are willing to engage with native advertising when it mimics the content they are already consuming,” added Ashley Kemper, senior marketing strategist at Web design and marketing firm Blue Fountain Media. “As a whole, consumers absorb native ads 53 percent more frequently than display ads, and are 68 percent more willing to share a native ad than a display ad with a friend or family member,” according to recent research from Sharethrough, Kemper said.

Of the IAB’s native advertising formats, Goodin believes that in-feed units and recommendation widgets are the best formats to use when targeting Gen Y audiences.

“Younger audiences tend to spend more time on social networks and they respond positively to products and services that their friends recommend,” Goodin said. “In-feed units make sense as they allow brands to reach a younger audience in that social-network setting. Recommendation widgets that are placed on publications that cater to a younger demographic are also effective, just as long as they provide relevant and useful content.”

Due to the nature of native ads, the biggest challenge marketers face is walking the fine line between providing a high-quality, creative branded message and being overtly promotional, Kemper said.

“A successful native ad will in fact not feel like an ad at all, but rather will be unique and engaging content that a user wants to voluntarily consume,” she said. “Small businesses with no dedicated creative team may assume they can’t produce the necessary content to be successful in native ads, but starting small with promoted social posts before working up to larger efforts will allow them to test the effectiveness of tactics as they go.”

Another challenge is fighting the misconception that native ads are sneaky and misleading by masquerading as legitimate editorial content.

“While it is true that several native ad providers could better disclose their ads, being clear and upfront with consumers is actually very easy to do,” Nashed said. “Properly disclosed units help consumers understand if an ad is relevant to them. It filters interaction and ensures that consumers clicking your ads are intending to engage your brand. The result is properly informed consumers recognizing offers and articles, and selecting which they would like to learn more about.”

The best thing you can do as a business owner who is interested in native advertising is to do your research. Understanding your options in terms of format and ad provider — and truly knowing what your audience wants — are good places to start.

“Gain a solid understanding of all the available native ad options and select the best options that align with your business’s goals and strategies,” Goodin said. “Native ad formats can vary immensely in their placement, timing, delivery and relevance, and it’s important to find the right balance to meet your audience’s needs.”

“There is not one approach to marketing success, but native advertising speaks to your audience [the way] they want to be engaged,” Nashed added. “When your native ad provider delivers quality through its publisher network, disclosure practices and technology, it can deliver great business results.”

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Was there truth to John Oliver’s rant or was the comedic host unfair in his admonishments?

Time has done little to dull the sting of John Oliver’s satirical rant against native advertising. With more than 1.5 million views and 1,500 comments (as of this writing), the HBO talk show host’s incendiary critique has torn through the Web, garnering viral praise for both its humor and scrutiny.

[Oliver’s] points and the overall topic definitely deserve a lot more discussion,” says Ash Nashed, CEO and founder of digital media company Adiant. However, now that this discourse has started, where should it go? Even better, where has the conversation been thus far?

Much of Oliver’s ire was directed at Buzzfeed and its native ad model. “Portraying BuzzFeed’s practices as representative of all of native advertising is an over-generalization. That is just one native approach,” Nashed says. “Native ads, content marketing, proper disclosures, and purposely misleading practices are interrelated, but separate points.”

Oliver’s assault on advertorial content was bolstered by the real ethical implications in misleading consumers. In fact, some take a hard line against all native ads, even those clearly cited as such. “There is no doubt that this is an unethical misuse of the public’s trust and should not be tolerated by ad networks, publishers, or their audiences,” opines Sergey Denisenko, CEO at ad network MGID.  “As a matter of fact, the FTC already has regulations in place to make sure this doesn’t happen.” However, according to Oliver’s Buzzfeed example, misleading or obscure sponsorship labeling occurs often enough on major platforms that there may be inherent flaws in the model. Perhaps an alternative is necessary?

“What alternative? The fact of the matter is that advertising has been dying a slow death and it has to evolve to be more effective—online advertising in particular,” explains Paige O’Neill, CMO at SDL. “I don’t believe sponsored content is the final form for advertising.” That’s not to say native advertising cannot improve as a practice. Brands can increase the ethical fidelity and overall effect of native ads, according to Denisenko, Nashed, and O’Neill. Here are three ways:

Educate through content

Branded content offends few when the aim is to advise or inform. “Strive to educate and provide true informational value on these topics,” O’Neill says. “There is most definitely a way to develop [native ad] content in a way that achieves the goal of educating the reader and getting across the brand value.”

Use transparent header language

Labeling content as “Recommended” or “More in news” is the definition of counterproductive, unless the aim is to confuse consumers. “Ensure the use of transparent header language for native units and widgets,” Adiant’s Nashed says. “Use headers like ‘Offers and Articles from Around the Web,’ as this header clearly explains the mix of ads and content with which a consumer is about to engage.”

Do not obfuscate

In line with Nasheed’s emphasis on clarity, Denisenko suggests that marketers avoid creating content that borders on being an ad. “If an ad itself suggests that a person would be encouraged to use a product or service it cannot go unnoticed. [What] Oliver opposes are the ads that are masqueraded for content even though properly labeled,” Denisenko says. “The whole chain of content marketing must remain ethical from start to finish so that the consumer’s trust remains intact.”

Although the future of native advertising is unclear, it has proven effective for brands and valuable to consumers–but Oliver’s criticisms cannot be ignored. The model must continue to evolve to avoid damaging customer trust.

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Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently stated that 46 percent of Millennials consumed branded content through a native ad.  One third of those Millennials then shared that branded content. What’s the takeaway from these comments? It showcases the growing value of native ads, especially when it comes to engaging Millennials.

Millennials consume a lot of content, increasingly through their smartphones and tablets. Social sharing is also second nature for them, which gives interesting content a good chance to be cost-effectively circulated widely.

The one-third sharing statistic is especially important because the value of content becomes much greater when you consider its potential to be shared beyond just one consumer. Millennials’ information consumption and sharing behaviors have presented marketers with a unique opportunity to capture the attention of this group.

Native advertising provides an extraordinary way to reach Millennials with key messages and broad content. It is also an exciting alternative to traditional digital ads that are demonstrating declining effectiveness. Let’s dive into four reasons savvy marketers are moving to native advertising to engage Millennials and leverage all the benefits of social sharing.

1. Performance – plain and simple.
Native ads are consistently outperforming traditional display ads in terms of engagement rates. Millennials are a generation that grew up with display ads and widely treat them as scenery, not a compelling call that drives action. Native ad relevancy is driven through brief messages and a content format, which collects and holds Millennials’ attention.

2. Engage through quality content.
Creating long-term brand loyalty among Millennials requires engaging them with entertaining and thought-provoking content. Native ads are valuable to reach this branding goal because they set-up conversations between the brand and the consumer. In contrast, traditional display ads typically communicate commands such as “buy this” and “go here or a softer sell designed to elicit a response.

3. Blending in versus interrupting.
Marketing 101 tells us to be bright, be brief, and be gone when specifically advertising to consumers. Millennials are especially discerning about giving their attention and are accustomed to convenience. They use their phones to find what they need and then move on. Native ads blend in, provide a small preview of content, and offer an engagement opportunity without interrupting a reader.

4. Best practices and best outlets.
Social media platforms and aggregated news content sites are two favorites of Millennials. Native ads are especially effective when you integrate well into content at the right outlets.  Combining unobtrusive, brief messages around relevant content ensures the message is in line with the subject matter that is top of mind. This combination delivers especially effective native advertising results.

The effectiveness of native ads is clearly driving investment from the broader advertising industry. For example, as traditional display ad revenues continue to fall, big media firms such as Time Inc. have recently created native ad groups that are focused on driving advertising dollars through well-written content.  The investment is even more clearly notable with analyst firm BIA/Kelsey predicting a 62% native ad spending increase from 2014 to 2017. Marketers that need to capture the powerful Millennial market need to add native advertising to their campaign strategy in order to drive engagement and drive brand building through social sharing.

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Here are a few ways that content recommendation widgets hurt publishers and helpful tips on how to gain value and minimize cost.

Using content recommendation widgets to monetize website traffic is a growing practice. Content recommendation companies provide third-party content through a widget on websites and then pay publishers for driving traffic through links.  These companies always promote the revenue benefits, but publishers need to fully consider the opportunity cost.  Many times publishers are not able to recognize if widgets are generating enough revenue to offset what they are sacrificing to have them in the first place.

Consider the true cost of content recommendation widgets

• Enabling visitors to click on content that drives them to another site is sending away pageviews and potential clicks on premium ad units, for pennies. Unless a publisher can make up the loss of engagement with even more traffic, they are only succeeding in eroding value and revenue.
• Publishers lend credibility to competitive sources when content is labeled as “Recommended”. Driving visitors to sites with lesser content, when it has been endorsed by the referring site, reduces a publisher’s own credibility with its audience.
• It’s hard to get unique visitors and harder to keep them coming back. By directing traffic to competitive sites, publishers are prompting visitors to consider other sources and develop new reading habits. The chances that a visitor will click to a competitive site and then return to the referring site are low.

Publishers can combat these issues by focusing on the following.

• Only work with companies that focus primarily on native ads and internal content recommendations, such as Adblade.  A content marketing partner must ensure publishers benefit while mitigating the risk of driving away revenue.
• Recommendation widgets have their place, but they should only be used when advertisers pays a premium for traffic.  A publisher’s audience has great value, for which they need to be compensated for delivering.  Ensure your content marketing partner agrees and actually delivers sustained results.
• A content marketing partner must provide proper disclosures.  As we mentioned, keeping visitors coming back is tough. Promoting good engagement by ensuring that they know exactly what they are clicking-on is critical to protecting your relationship with the visitor. If you allow them to be mislead with inadequate disclosures they are more likely to consider other sources for their information.

Although these widgets seem beneficial at first, they can slowly drain a site of its value and revenue without the publisher noticing.  High quality, engaged audiences driving lots of post-click page views are priorities for Adblade, which has been built to specifically deliver great benefits, while minimizing costs.

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Adiant, the largest native advertising platform on the web and owner of Adblade and IndustryBrains, today announced the rollout of its proprietary Data Management Platform (DMP) technology, now available to Adblade advertisers. Adiant’s DMP technology gives advertisers and agencies a powerful tool to improve their native advertising campaign’s performance. Read more…

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Getting PR coverage for your business is hard. If you’re a small to mid size business, you can easily spend up to $10,000 a month on a PR agency, which might just get you one or two media placements in a local or niche magazine per month.  After an initial bump in traffic, you might visit your web logs and see things return to normal as if nothing happened. It’s very exciting to get coverage and sometimes the whole office celebrates but, more often than not, things return to normal.

It doesn’t have to be that way and I’ll tell you a trick that some people are learning that works wonders – Earned Media Amplification.

What is Earned Media Amplification?

Earned media amplification is using paid advertisements to send traffic to your positive PR coverage.  See, even if you make it to the front page of the New York Times’ website, chances are you’ll be bumped pretty quickly in this fast pace news cycle.  You might be visible for a few hours or even minutes, because things move fast these days.

Earned Media Amplification allows you to extend your coverage for days, weeks or even months at a time.  One of the reasons why this is so powerful is that even with the best content possible on your site, a 3rd party will usually have more credibility.

How to pick the best PR coverage to Amplify

If you are going to run an Earned Media Amplification campaign and you have a few different articles to choose from, here are a few things to look for when deciding on an article:

1. Publication – There is definitely a pecking order when it comes to news outlets, with international publications like BBC News and CNN at the top of the list.  As a general rule you want to pick your more prestigious coverage over local or online outlets.  This is many times a judgment call, if you’re between two outlets, you can always ask some of your existing clients which outlet they like better.
2. Don’t Overlook the Power of Niche Publications – Sometimes a niche publication has a better reputation for your industry than a bigger publication.  For example, a positive review for your product in Consumer Reports would potentially have a larger impact than one in USA Today.
3. Hidden SEO Benefits – Sending traffic to a 3rd party site can have affects on your SEO results that you need to consider.  Google is now using social signals on articles to determine ranking.  The more traffic you send to an article, the more likely that it will acquire more likes, tweets and plus ones.  This means the positive article is more likely to show up and be on the first page results for your brand (a good thing)
4. Links Within Articles – Most of the time, when someone writes an article about your company, they will make your company name link to your site.  This will increase the likelihood that a user will also visit your site and be exposed further to your brand. The other thing you might want to consider is if the link is a “follow” link, this is an SEO term that means that the link is better for SEO.
5. Alexa Ranking – If you’re between two publications but can’t determine which one is a bigger brand, you can always visit Alexa.com and see their online ranking.  This will give you an idea about which publication has more traffic and is a bigger brand
6. Test Different Ads – If you’re between two articles, the easiest way to determine which one is better is to conduct a small test between the two.  You can then use something like Google Analytics to determine which one is having a greater effect on visitors or conversions on your site.

Earned Media Amplification is a fairly new concept in the media space.  Most people assume that it’s always better to run traffic to their own site but this isn’t always the case.  You might have better branding and conversions sending traffic to a 3rd party site to partially pre-sell those visitors.

Bonus Tip: If you plan on sending significant traffic to a 3rd party website, let them know.  It will give them a heads up on why your article is getting bumped up on their web logs so much and it might make it easier to get additional coverage in the future.

Apple announced over one million apps were in the iTunes App store at the end of 2013.  Many companies think that they will come out with the best app ever and that people will somehow find it organically, this is far from the truth.  It’s true that consumers love to download apps, over 60 billion apps have been downloaded since the app store has been open, but it’s estimated that nearly half of that business goes to only 0.1% of the available apps.  It’s next to impossible to be found in the app store without some outside marketing.  Even the second top grossing app “Clash of Clans” has resorted to advertising on TV to get people to notice them.

Think Content
Spending on content marketing has been growing in in the last few years dramatically.  Last year, the average marketer spent over 26% of their marketing budget on content marketing and this is expected to grow in 2014.  Here are a few tips on how you can use content marketing to market your app:

1. Does it Pass the “What’s in it for Them?” Test – When you’re writing content, the first think you need to keep in mind is the reader.  Sometimes we are so focused on what we are doing as a company and get excited about things that the average person just doesn’t care about.  Maybe it took 3 months for you to work on a cloud-syncing feature for your app and you’re really excited.  The feature might be exciting but the typical user doesn’t really care about the in’s and out’s of how it works.  Make sure you’re always writing to the consumer.
2. Write Lots of Quality Content – As much as you think you know your audience, you’ll find that you might write the occasional dud.  It’s better to produce more content than less when it comes to content marketing.
3. Track Your Conversions – Content marketing can bring in a ton of clicks to download your app, make sure you track where those clicks are coming from.  You can use Google Analytics for free and if you discover something that really clicks with your audience, you can write more pieces on the subject.
4. You Are Not A Banker – Look, you’re not a banker or a lawyer that has tons of regulations to follow with what you say, have some fun with your writing.  Show your personality and a bit of your emotions.  You don’t have to write like a corporate drone.
5. Great Amazing Headlines – Your headline is the most important part of your content.  It’s what helps people decide on social media if they should click on your link.  Take at least 20% of your writing time to come up with the perfect headline.
6. Use Lots of Images – Images are powerful storytellers, use them throughout your content.  Take time to select the perfect images if you’re using stock photography.  If you’re adding screenshots to your content, the more the better.
7. Use Content Amplification – Just like the app store, getting your content out to the public can be tricky. Remember to post it in every social channel you participate on.  Also, once you find an article that seems to be performing, think about using paid content-style ads to increase your exposure further.

Content marketing isn’t just for consumer-goods companies.  App developers can really strive with the same strategies and stand out both in and out of the App Store.

Companies spend hundreds and thousands of dollars every month with PR companies to get earned media. Earned media, by its very nature, is typically hard to control in both messaging and distribution. This is what makes earned media so valuable to brands. Once you’ve received positive third-party coverage, you can use these tips to strengthen your message.

1. Spread it on social media – the first thing you should do to spread the message of your positive coverage is to post it to social media. Make sure to take the time to create custom graphics for your posts as needed. Also, be sure to use hashtags when appropriate to gain additional exposure outside your present followers. Ask others in your company to spread the word about your new coverage.
2. Track it – many times once you get earned media, you’ll find that additional outlets will pick up this coverage and redistribute it. They may do this through their social channels or their website. Be sure to give them some love for their exposure by liking or re-tweeting their messages. You can use tools like HootSuite or Google alerts to monitor your mentions.
3. Amplify your earned media – once you’ve received your positive coverage there’s no sense letting it drop from consciousness after a few days. This coverage could take you days, weeks, or even months to receive. Using sponsored stories or content style ads allows you to extend your coverage for as long as you’d like. The great thing with paid content style ads like Newsbullets is it allows you to target your specific audience in ways that general earned media does not allow.
4. Measure your results – like any other online marketing endeavor, it is important that you track and measure your successes. Your earned media on a publisher’s site will usually have social media counters that allow you to track how many people have interacted with the article. Additionally, you should keep track of how many comments, both good and bad, you receive. You can also use tools like Google analytics to view how many visitors you’ve received from a specific website. You will also need to use analytics to see how many conversions you’ve received from your earned media.

Your sponsored stories and content style ads will have its own set of metrics that you can use to judge the amount of traffic you’ve received, plus any conversions that have been delivered.

Everyone gets so excited when they receive positive PR coverage in a publication. Remember to use these tips to further spread the word and amplify your work results.