Native Advertising Is Finally About To Go Mainstream
Thanks To The New York Times
The New York Times has announced that it will be removing display advertising from its website, and instead of relying on the IAB standard advertisements for its properties, the company will be releasing custom ad alternatives to marketers.
Explaining what native advertising is can be painfully difficult, considering it means something different to everyone. At its core, Native can be described as a user experience (UX) optimized ad unit that fits into a publisher’s design style guide. The New York Times is creating advertisements that meet their internal, advertiser, and reader needs. It’s the right move for the New York Times, and it’s certainly a trend worth keeping an eye on as the industry starts to move forward.
One-size fits all advertising like all things one-size fits all, doesn’t always work out as one would expect. Publishers have unique needs, different audiences, and uncommon perspectives on what constitutes an advertisement for their publications. The New York Times has decided that it’s the right time to start providing its unique audience with unique ads.
Standards, to this point, have helped advertisers and marketers quickly build campaign creative and disseminate the files across thousands of publications with ease. Native advertising has finally reached the same place, and the New York Times is about to prove it. Creating native ad campaigns is as simple as creating a traditional display advertisement now. The performance of native campaigns, however, far outperform other types of advertising online already.
Audiences are different, and the publishers who recognize that first stand to gain the strongest foothold with advertisers looking to promote their brands with native ad campaigns.
Solving The UX Conundrum With Advertising.
When it comes to assuaging readership concerns regarding advertising online, selling custom, ethical, and UX friendly advertisement placements to marketers is the only way that a publisher can ensure a consumer-friendly placement. Standards-based placements and fully automated systems reliant on exchanges will always make that difficult. These systems have historically put publishers on the sideline and then hold them hostage to technologies that may not be in the best interest of their companies.
Deeper publisher involvement in advertising, especially in the form of native offerings, is an excellent first step in solving the UX conundrum the publishing industry has faced with display advertising over the last half decade. The tools exist, the technologies are already available for automating the buying and selling of native ads directly to advertisers. A new advertising paradigm may finally be on the horizon.
The new advertising standard is no standard. It’s time to set custom free.
PS — When I say the tools exist, I mean it — here’s a native ad that you can easily purchase on StockTwits. It’s using DFP Custom Templates, and the sales and trafficking of the ad is fully automated on the BuySellAds Platform.
