Quick recap

Definition of native advertising

The idea behind native advertising – a term that first sprouted in 2011 – is to create content that seamlessly blends with the look and feel of the format in which it is published. For instance, a native ad can take the form of editorial content that informs a reader about something relevant while addressing their latent need for a product or service.

Native advertising has boomed in the last couple of years and its expanse is estimated to increase by 372% by 2025 – it’s here to stay!

The benefits of native advertising

  •  Reach a new and larger audience – 53% of web surfers prefer native ads to banner ads
  •  Higher engagement – As a less intrusive advertising method, native ads are likely to boost purchase intent by 18%
  •  Fight ad fatigue and bypass ad-blockers – While 80% of internet users use ad blocks to avoid banner ads, two-thirds of Gen X consumers trust native content over traditional advertising
  •  Enables you to tap into a consumer’s latent needs – 45.4% of consumers say that sponsored content is more relevant to them
  •  Great method to advertise on the open web

Elements of a winning native campaign

Multi-channel approach

Since 2020, Social Blue has been offering native advertising to its clients. As an independent lead generation agency, we strive to find the best and most relevant traffic for our clients. Therefore, we use various premium traffic sources and recommendation platforms to show high-quality content to new and wider audiences to generate leads for our clients. Our campaigns across the globe are featured in content widgets on established websites as news that ‘you may like’ or that is recommended for you. Although clearly tagged as an advertisement, our content seamlessly blends into the website on which it has been advertised. We can use a range of ad formats and advanced targeting options to specify the desired audience.

Partnerships with traffic sources

At Social Blue, we see the incredible potential of native advertising, and therefore we’re investing in establishing great partnerships with our traffic sources. We consciously cultivate partnerships with the traffic sources that we work with.

By linking native traffic source platforms with our in-house systems, we combine our partner’s technology with our own to ensure optimal monitoring and optimization of our campaigns to achieve the best possible results for our clients.

This past year we’ve been focusing on the integration of native traffic source platforms with our in-house systems in order to monitor, optimize and automate campaigns as we were already doing with our social campaigns. This really builds toward native growth within our company.
Glenn de Boer Head of IT

Quality assurance and brand safety

Ads are shown in trusted environments. Native partner platforms are only connected to premium websites. Quality control in regard to the ad content created, the publisher’s website, and compliance with local data protection laws ensures brand safety.

As we work with a pay-per-lead model, we have a mutual goal together with our clients to only using qualitative publishers via traffic sources. High-quality traffic means high-quality leads, which equals satisfied clients.
Bert Jan van der Molen Head of Business Native and Display advertising

Bottom line

Qualitative content can really scale your campaign, and as a less intrusive advertising technique, native advertising can help you tap into the latent needs of your consumers while achieving higher engagement.

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