Native Advertising: Leveraging content is a custom game

I read an article today in Digiday about how the Atlantic is investing in native advertising in order to deliver more relevant and compelling ads to its readers (and brand partners). While the logic is sound – and makes sense that contextually placed ads are yielding higher performance metrics than their standard, IAB counter-parts – there was a point made about customization vs. scalability that struck me. (Note: My opinions on native advertising are not at all yet fully formed, and I'm weary, as others, of the buzz-worthiness for what might as well still be called content marketing.)

But back to the article response: The comment was around the difficultly of scaling this kind of native advertising, because it is so dependent on the publishers’ site and surrounding copy. OBVIOUSLY! That’s the whole point. The desire to have customized and more deeply integrated ads within a publishers site comes at the cost of not easily achieving scale. And, in my opinion, that should be fine. If brands are really taking full advantage of native advertising, they should have a finite (and manageable) number out outlets for it. And, to get the results they’re looking for, each of these platforms rightfully deserves the attention, time and energy required of customization.

I understand the desire to have your cake and eat it, too; but I see the desire for “easy”, scalable native advertising as a bit of an oxymoron. The beauty and resonance of these kinds of ad solutions is entirely dependent on their content adjacency and where/how they appear. If done right, I’d say there’s even a chance that such advertising enhances a user’s experience, and offers them truly desired information. Bottom line is that native advertising is valuable and should be perceived as such. But if you’re not willing to spending the extra (I’d argue invaluable) time to do it right, you might as well not do it at all.     

[A quick note on customization: I lately get the sense that this word is starting to build a negative connotation in this fast-paced, scale-crazy, digital environment. Even if the word is interpreted to imply more time and energy spent, it is still what differentiates and ultimately distinguishes you from the others. And, I’d argue, brands and consumers are both looking for this kind of differentiated content as they wade through their daily bombardment of digital “stuff”. So spend the extra time. Take a risk (you can start small) and invest in something custom. It only has to be as big or intimidating a word as you make it.]