Do You Actually Need Native Advertising?

An attempt at honest perspective from a native ad producer

As someone who makes a living from creating native ads and marketing strategies, I should be tempted to say that there’s no better way to promote one’s products or services. However, this would be a lie. Each problem in the world must have several solutions, ranging from best to worst, and it so happens that in the world of marketing, native advertising isn’t always the best option.

In this post, I’ll take a look at the most common instances when you shouldn’t go for native advertising, and will offer you a more reasonable alternative.

When native ads will not work

1. Some products or services are just unfit for native advertising. Most of them are in the B2B segment. It has a simple explanation: no matter how cool your native ad might be, it won’t bring about great conversion rate if the core product is intended for a narrow group of entrepreneurs. Say, if you manufacture plastic caps, a marketing agency can spread the word about you all around the globe. Every street cat in the most secluded part of the world will know about you. But no matter what you do, your target audience will still consist of soft drink makers. And they won’t care much about your reputation; your pricing would be way more interesting to them.
2. You don’t need a native ad if you know that a direct ad would have a similar effect. You can spend thousands on creating an intricate feature for a respectable publication and get a conversion rate that would be lower than you expected. However, if you get the same conversion rate from a regular ad on Google, it would not seem as bad. In that case, paying Google to place your link on top would be noticeably cheaper than hiring writers, artists, webmasters and UI experts.
3. You will hardly need a native ad targeted at some expert community. It doesn’t really matter what kind of experts we’re talking about. Say, if you have a technological startup and wish to find some investors, it’s way more reasonable to hire some people to make up a cool presentation that you’ll be showing to prospective partners; or go to conferences and meetups that investors themselves attend in the search for promising newcomers. Even the best native ad won’t have a comparable effect on your business growth. And the chances of finding an investment will be much higher.

Conclusion

All in all, native advertising is always about engaging with wider audiences. It is a great way to bypass banner blindness and ad blocks. However, you should always remember one thing.

No matter the conversion rate, CTR and other indices, a native ad is the way to get your audience interested in your product or service. That’s the only thing it can guarantee to some extent. And only a fraction of those interested will actually use your services or buy your product, most likely pursuant to the famous Pareto principle. It means that out of the entire audience reached, only about 20% will get interested, and out of those 20% only 20% will buy something from you. So, in absolute numbers, if you reached an audience of 1,000 people, you can expect only around 40 to become your clients. That’s one of the reasons why native ads are usually intended for very wide audiences: it simply increases the chance that your potential customer will read it.

And that is the main reason why there are instances when native ads just fall through the roof, even if they’re very well crafted. That’s the sad reality of our business. Stay tuned.