Native Advertising 101:Can Native Ads Work for News Publishers

In the first post of this series, we discussed the framework and elements which can help evaluate the native ad solutions available in the market today. Once you have finalized on a partner to power your native ad needs, you get to the next most important step - identifying what ad concepts can work for your property.

The beauty of native ads is that they blend seamlessly with the content. This presents a unique opportunity to present the most relevant advertisements to a user, depending on the content he is consuming. Lets consider a news app. Most news publishers have multiple pages in their apps - national coverage, international coverage, entertainment, local happenings, etc. Each ad placement on these individual pages will carry additional value and relevance when targeted right. Advertisers for electronic products like Samsung can be assured that their mobile advertising money is being spent right, if their ad appears amongst the different tiles in the technology page. Similarly, other brand advertisers for consumer products can get meaningful impressions when their ad is featured in the lifestyle pages. While these targeting capabilities have been available traditionally, with native ads the impact is further amplified - unlike sticky banners at the top/bottom of the screen, native ads cannot be ignored. They are a part of the content being consumed.

The following images show a few native ad concepts for news publishers - a small subset of the whole world of possibilities out there.