Digiday
Native advertising is a more insidious encroachment into consumer media content than any prior form of advertising. Billions of banner ad impressions may annoy readers, but they don’t misdirect users by disguising the source of the message — and this is exactly what native does. If publishers and marketers aren’t careful, they are going to poison the well of digital ad communications by breaking consumer trust.
First, understand why publishers are so tempted to make native their future. Digital outlets are getting creamed by RTB on online ad inventory that avoids the comparatively high prices publishers charge for ads. If you want to reach a business executive, you could pay The Wall Street Journal a $17 CPM on its website, or you could use DSP audience targeting to reach the same executives at a $2.50 CPM. eMarketer estimates RTB will account for 19 percent of all U.S. display advertising in 2013, and if you factor in the lower costs per impression, that translates to about 44 percent of all online display impressions. (Any publisher saying RTB is substandard ad inventory must now be prepared to explain why nearly half of her inventory is lousy.)
Publishers see native as a way to convince marketers to spend more directly with them — and to charge higher ad rates. Like all marketing intrusions, native has a spectrum of annoyance; I classify it into three categories: “The Frame,” “The Insertion” and “The Misdirection.” At each level, native is growing more problematic.
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Categories: Digital Media Blog
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Tags: 2013, ads, blog, CPM, DIGIDAY, digital, digital advertising, digital marketing, digital media, eMarketer, Huffington, marketing, media, native advertising, RTB, vative, Wall Street
