A recent article in Ad Age said that some of America\’s largest advertisers are getting ready to spend big – an estimated $4.3Billion in 2015, on Native Ads, a 34% burst from 2014\’s spend.
This fresh allocation raises some concerns when taken in context of traditional display publishers. Native purists see content as a high touch effort where advertisers and publishers work closely together to tie in a well developed content campaign. If scale is the object, how can an Advertiser develop one quality effort and easily distribute that content, in context, to various publishers across the web?
We believe that quality content can be distributed at scale. From a creative perspective, a contextual piece of content can be extended beyond a given publisher, or modified to reflect the publisher brand without having to re-develop the entire piece. Companies like Contently and Newscred are delivering great value to marketers in this regard. From a scale perspective, companies like DistroScale, which offers a platform and marketplace for publishers who wish to publish native ads, and Nativo, another such network, are paving the way toward prime-time distribution, and in a way that allows advertisers to spread their wings on the content front.
It goes without saying that the advertisers in the report including GE, Kimberly-Clark, and Ford are seeing a zero sum gain with traditional display. \”Traditional digital advertising has become wallpaper,\” Jason Hill, GE\’s global head of media strategy, said in the report. \”It doesn\’t improve anyone\’s experience on a site and readers, myself included, pretty much look past it.\”
Mr. Hill is also bullish on the ability to deliver content at scale, \”Brands that have a strong point of view and great partners to help them express it can enjoy massive engagement\” with native advertising, he added.
Our mandate is to enable marketers to distribute their content at scale in qualitative ways.. a daunting task but we\’re up for the challenge!