If Native Advertising is So Great, Why Does It Suck So Much? -- Tom Foran, CRO, Outbrain

One of the great many ironies of native advertising is that as a more a subtle digital output than other forms of advertising itamp8217s awfully distractingWith so much of the discourse on native focused on everything but its substance from what to call it as a digital trend to how to define it and label its individual unit itamp8217s tempting to think that the reason it has yet to graduate to the silver bullet status we all suspect it might is simply a matter of nomenclature In doing so we are abdicating our responsibility as an industry to make the web better We are actively avoiding both the real problem in nativeamp8217s current iteration and the real opportunity that native affordsFirst the opportunity We have arrived at the moment where brands have just started to effectively translate their storytelling prowess to digital media and find the means of getting those stories in front of willing audiences Conversely audiences have only been willing insofar as the stories coming from brands are authentic and valuable to their daytoday existence Thereamp8217s plenty of evidence to support the notion that consumers donamp8217t lose any sleep over who produces the content they enjoy In fact consumers have developed an expectation that the brands on their radars should produce content serially A recent TNS study found that 60 of consumers expect owned content from brands nearly half of them 46 follow their favorite brandsamp8217 blogs while 40 of consumers are disappointed in brands that donamp8217t produce or maintain a blog citing everything from laziness to fading relevance as reasons a brand might not bother with contentThis development is larger than native advertising Brands have found branding in digital that actually works with social media and content marketing the discipline of producing and distributing content across the web the real revolutions on that front However you care to define native advertising it would be a disservice to storytelling at large to relegate it to an ad unit on a page thatamp8217s simply more seamless than the display clutter surrounding itLike any professional storyteller brands need platforms to broadcast their stories to new audiences Over the last couple of years native advertising on media sites with huge audiences appeared as an incredibly attractive asset if for no other reason than for seemingly the first time digital media had found an ad unit for branding for storytelling The other added benefits its ability to increase visibility for the brand and leverage the adjacency the brand shares with the publisher and the ability of publishers to charge a premium for the product at a time when theyamp8217re being challenged on the viewability of their display ad placements appeared to be subplots albeit compelling subplotsBut somewhere along the way the subplots overtook the main story A lethal pathogen crept into native advertising one that could prove to be fatalNative advertising is surprise barely used to tell authentic stories at all Itamp8217s being used as a host for the same old selling tactics from the print and early online era into the parts of a consumeramp8217s digital journey they still enjoy the parts that involve browsing contentWhen according to a recent Chartbeat study audiences engage with native advertising 50 less than with what they deem to be amp8220realamp8221 content it is this viral strain that theyamp8217re reacting to Audiences know advertorials when they seem them the same advertorials they automatically flip past in a print magazine Editorial contentamp8217s authenticity perceived or real impacts engagement go figure Our own research suggests that when publishers slip a banner ad in the content stream it actually depreciates the user trust of the entire feed by as much as 10 Thatamp8217s not good for people producing native ads and itamp8217s not good for brand marketersPretty soon and thereamp8217s already evidence of this happening consumers wonamp8217t trust any content with a brandamp8217s name appended to it undoing the gains weamp8217ve made with the growth of content marketing Given its compromised state itamp8217s time for brand storytellers to consider Do I really need native advertising to tell authentic stories to willing audiences The very idea of amp8220nativeamp8221 or letamp8217s face it camouflaged advertising misses the point entirely The content that should be celebrated isnamp8217t advertising at allThe muchvaunted NetflixNew York Times Collaboration amp8220Women Inmatesamp8221 has much more in common with plain amp8216ole investigative journalism yes highminded wellrespected journalism than advertising Had amp8220Women Inmatesamp8221 been a featurelength documentary on the festival circuit with Netflix onboard as a producer would its credibility come into a question Why shouldnamp8217t the same principles of urgent compelling storytelling translate to the hallowed pages of premium publisher sites Or owned content domains for that matterThe brands that are seeing success in the native space arenamp8217t relying on the old tropes that ruined digital advertorials Instead theyamp8217re investing in their content hubs and see those hubs as the way to tell their story Companies like Goldman Sachs and IBM and American Express have been consistently producing new original content unencumbered by efforts that contaminate the messaging with payola undertonesPart of the issue is that traditional advertising companies have been at the heart of the newfangled world of native advertising and all theyamp8217ve known from CMOs since time immemorial well like the 1950s are the same unhelpful directives that will ruin a native advertising campaign In this respect advertising agencies need to adopt the practices of their PR brethren The message is more important than the branding and over time the message will become synonymous with the branding We need to stop thinking of advertising as a tool that interrupts the audience and more one that enhances their lives Storytelling is the new branding amp8230 except that itamp8217s not new at all It never went away We just neglected it for a while in digitalWe are at the nascent stages of native advertising and this crossroads is a make or break for the industry Do it right and native may yet be saved so that it can in turn lift a struggling media industry That wonamp8217t happen until we start putting the user first and treat the virus of amp8220mefirstamp8221 advertisingTom Foran is Chief Revenue Officer at Outbrain the content discovery platform He is responsible for driving rapid growth and overseeing sales business operations and client services globally Tom previously held positions at Quigo NBCi Yahoo and most recently Crisp Media as CROCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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If Native Advertising is So Great, Why Does It Suck So Much? -- Tom Foran, CRO, Outbrain

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