Native advertising can be synonymous with custom ad units, custom sponsorships, sponsored content, integrated content sponsorships and is basically any type of ad that integrates naturally with the website… and looks like it belongs there. There are many types including sponsored posts, videos, tweets, reviews, giveaways, events, announcements, endorsed content etc., and many more to come as the options are open to however creative publishers would like to get with their native ad strategies. This endorsed post is an example of native advertising in itself, but below are some examples of native advertising in action:
1. Devour: Sponsored Videos
Devour’s video ads are integrated smoothly with all their other videos and clearly marked as an “AD.” As you can see in the bottom right corner there is an ad for “Mouthopedia,” which is an entertaining video by Mcdonalds about their Bigmac. This allows the advertiser to get a similar CTR as the other spots as it is right in line to the other curated videos.
2. Uncrate: Sponsored Gear
Uncrate, the partner site to Devour, runs sponsored product or gear campaigns that fit nicely into their stream of content. All the gear is relevant to the male community and clearly marked as sponsored or featured.
3. BuzzFeed: Branded Content
As you can see BuzzFeed only runs branded content opportunities that engage the reader just like any other piece of their content would, and it is endorsed by a relevant brand… usually Fortune 500 companies. This native advertising strategy has taken place of any banner advertising strategy on BuzzFeed.
4. The Awl: BuzzFeed Syndication Sponsored Stories
In partnership with BuzzFeed, TheAwl.com presents sponsored stories of relevant and entertaining content directly to their users. If you click on the story it goes to the BuzzFeed landing page where you can like, or visit the sponsor’s pages.
5. Stumbleupon: Paid Discovery
StumbleUpon provides a very cost effective native advertising solution. The paid discovery lets you pay as low as 5 cents per ‘stumble’ which can then be stumbled again to provide for even more ‘organic stumbles,’ which will lower your overall cost per user visit even below the original 5 cents. Each time you stumble upon a sponsored discovery it notes so in the top toolbar as you can see from the picture above. They have different engagement plants, 5 cents per visit being the cheapest and lowest and 25 cents being for only engaged users that spend a certain amount of time on your stumbled landing page.
6. Facebook Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts
Facebook may be the current king of native advertising, especially social native advertising. They offer the opportunity to promote posts or stories to friends, page followers or friends of page followers.
7. Twitter Promoted Tweets
You can see on the top corner and tweet stream that Twitter allows its users to promote their tweets much like Facebook’s promoted posts. The sponsors pay per tweet promoted and it is a great way to increase your twitter follower base.
8. Book Riot: Sponsored Book Recommendations
Book Riot provides authors a unique opportunity to get in on native advertising. They allow the author to set up a themed book recommendation post for a genre related to the author’s book. The author puts up a sponsored image, a short description, and link to their book purchase page on the recommendation post which allows them to directly engage with readers who are already interested in that particular genre.
9. Venture Beat: Sponsored Posts
One of the more straight forward and simple native advertising techniques that any publisher can do: a sponsored post! Venture Beat offers a straight forward sponsored post opportunity to advertisers that is clearly marked as sponsored within their content stream.
10. Boston.com: Sponsored Insights
Boston.com provides advertisers an opportunity to upload sponsored content to their ‘insights’ section which links directly to the sponsored content piece.
