We caught up with Sydney Mann, content writer at Taboola, the world’s leading discovery & native advertising site, to explore the latest 2021 affiliate marketing trends and best practice examples in native advertising.
Every day, people turn to editorial sites to keep up-to-date on news, entertainment, and information worldwide. According to the Pew Research Center, 37% of U.S. adults report reading their news online.
But more than just turning to these pages, people put their trust in editorial sites. When we surveyed 5,000 people in the U.S. earlier this year, we found that participants reported 3x more credible news sites than social media.
To approach the concept of confidence from a different perspective, we also asked the participants where they would expect to find the Fortune 500 company ads. Sixty-three percent of the participants reacted to this on news pages.
If you’re thinking to yourself at this point, “Okay, so the news sites are trustworthy, but how do I get my ads out there? “Then look no further than the native commercial.
What are native ads, exactly?
We leftover with a question, and now let’s pick up another one. Native advertising is the idea of making advertisements that are so compatible with the surrounding website’s content, assimilated to the design, and consistent with the network actions that the user thinks the ad belongs to.
Simply put, native ads build an experience that feels coherent rather than disruptive, something that is particularly valuable on news sites. This type of native advertising works for goals through the marketing funnel, from awareness to performance marketing.
Advertisers gain the opportunity to access the readers of tens of thousands of leading online publications where and when they are most likely to be open to your post.
Before we dive into native ads, though, it’s important to take some of the best practices, and that’s what we’re really going to cover today.
Best Practices in Native Advertising
Many things are going on in a good native ad, but the outcome is truly amazing when they come together.
Try outdoor photos with people and no text for videos.
Looking at image patterns leads to pictures winning over diagrams, individuals having more success than images without people, outdoor environments performing better than indoor, and the notion of less text, the better.
Based on these keywords, you might want to try to use words like ‘daughter and wife’ in your headlines, avoid ‘game’ and ‘health,’ and you might want to try ‘humble’ and ‘pop.’
Checking the Titles
Because of the above keyword patterns, let’s try it out as if we were, say, a florist. In the title analysis tool, we’ll test the following five headlines:
- 15 Bouquet Arrangements to honor a wedding day
- How to Style Humble Fall Leaves To Perfect Centerpiece
- Mouth-Watering Fruit And Flower Arrangements Your Husband Or Wife Will Be Loved
- More Attractive Garden Seven Simple Steps
- Photo-Worthy Flowers For Your Son or Your Daughter’s Graduation
Let’s see how they shook:
Best Practices Marketing Campaign: Study of Millions of Native Advertisements Through Editorial Sites
Ding, ding, ding, we’ve got a winner. The More Attractive Garden in Seven Simple Steps is the one to go for.
It’s not enough to find out a title and consider image patterns – it’s all about putting it together.
Let’s translate these patterns into examples of advertising.
To show you how all of the above patterns could find their way into different ads through different vertical lines, I’ve put together some examples that link it all together.
The Taboola Trends tool allows you to be more granular and define trends explicitly for each vertical, device type, location, etc. For today’s reason, let’s apply the general trends of native ads across the board.
Let’s claim that you’re a car company…
The argument is the list goes on, on and on and on. These trends are widely applicable, updated weekly, and can help you bring your native ad output to the next level.
What’s with the video?
Looking at the video patterns points to male subjects in the winter setting, no human subjects if possible, no text, no animals, and color vs. black and white.
These trends are also available by vertical, platform, length, and more so that you can get granular with your video ads.
Check out our weekly Taboola Trends update tool for this data and more.
Your best advertising in placements that people still believe.
If you could get your message in front of people who spend time and trust the information they consume, will you do it, right? That’s the very reason why native advertising only works.
Context is crucial in all ads, but this is never more true than on news and publisher websites. You want your commercial to sound organic in an individual’s experience, feel desirable, and feel trustworthy. It is also more critical than ever in these environments to have ad production guided by the data and best practices that are tried and tested.
If all this sounds interesting to you, then it’s probably high time for you to start exploring how native advertising can work for you. Taboola is always here waiting to help you do just that.
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