Native advertisements and content marketing are both cornerstones of many successful digital marketing plans. Although they are similar, it is advised to view native advertising and branded content marketing not as competitive solutions but rather as complementary tools that can power your digital marketing strategy.

Utilizing these solutions together allows you to compensate for each solution's weaknesses while maximizing its individual strengths. You get the best of both while mitigating the drawbacks at the same time. This provides your business with a competitive edge over those relying too heavily on either one.

Because it is more commonly used and easier to understand, content marketing tends to be the first thing businesses think about when implementing a digital strategy. Native ads can feel tricky and overwhelming at first, but they don’t have to be. With a little bit of assistance early on, businesses of any size can benefit from adding native ads to their marketing plan. 

In today’s article, we will be providing a comprehensive overview of how native ads can fit seamlessly into your company’s digital marketing strategy to help you reach, engage, and convert more potential customers without blowing up your budget.

The Difference Between Native Ads and Content Marketing

While similar to content marketing in appearance and feel for the user, native ads differ in their directness and how they are purchased and created. Native ads are often highly targeted and implemented with a specific goal in mind, while content marketing tends to play a more long-term focused game and can take a long time to provide a meaningful return on investment (ROI).

For example, when creating a content marketing plan for the upcoming quarter, you would likely reach out to a writer (or a full-service agency) that will create meaningful content that will lead to more organic traffic to your web page, which in turn will lead to increased long-term sales and other types of positive conversions.

This article that you are reading right now is a form of content marketing. By targeting a few commonly asked questions related to digital marketing and writing blog posts about them, we are improving our visibility on Google Search in hopes that business owners in need of our assistance see it and can reach out.

The key aspect that makes this article a piece of content marketing rather than a native advertisement is that its primary focus is on providing value without a hard sell or direct objective. This article does not contain any direct product placements or calls to action (CTAs) trying to incite a specific reaction.

Instead, the focus is on warming passive readers over time so that when they have a relevant need, our company will stick out in their brains, and they’ll reach out. Native ads, on the other hand, tend to have a much more direct, short-term goal in mind, such as a sale, email sign-up, or even a sharp, near-immediate increase in brand awareness.

What is Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to paid advertisements that seamlessly fit and integrate into the web page or mobile application where they are being displayed. In the simplest of terms: native ads are ads that don’t look or feel like ads. While this has made them controversial and led to some arguing that they are misleading to users, others argue that blurring the lines between advertisements and web content creates a less disruptive overall experience for the end user.

These types of advertisements tend to work best when integrated into a website that users already know and trust. Because they blend in and feel like part of whatever web page that they are embedded into, the sentiments that the user feels the site tends to extend to the advertisement.

This can take various forms, ranging from a social media post appearing directly on your timeline to an ad embedded within the written or visual content you consume daily. The key distinction between native ads and traditional ads is that they don’t make us feel and react to them in the way that we have been trained to respond to ads throughout our lives.

Instead of immediately feeling distrust or as if we’re being sold something, some of the trust and reliability from the original content or social media feed extends to the ad itself. Due to this increased sense of trust and reliability, studies have suggested that native advertisements receive a 5-10x higher click-through rate (CTR) than other types of advertisements.

Creating Seamless Native Ads

The best native advertisements do not feel like advertisements at all to an untrained eye. A simple yet highly effective way to measure this is to monitor how an average user interacts with the ad unprompted.

Do they view it as an extension of whatever content they are consuming, or is there something about the ad that separates it from the rest of the page? The answer to this question is telling and will let you know if you are on the right track to seamless integration with your ad’s creative.

That being said, the goal when creating an effective native ad is not to trick potential customers (though, unfortunately, many businesses do), but rather to showcase your products or services in a way that does not distract or interrupt their experience. 

Implement Native Advertising With Alan and Company

Alan and Co. is a full-service marketing agency with decades of experience in digital marketing, implementing effective content marketing and native ad campaigns for small businesses looking to improve their digital reach.

If you or your organization are looking for a digital marketing agency in the US that can help you with your native advertising or content marketing strategy, reach out today and schedule a free 45-minute consultation with Alan and Co. Marketing.

For additional free resources on digital marketing best practices or to just get a better idea of some of the things that we do here at Alan and Co., check out our blog, filled with hundreds of free articles just like the one you’ve just read.