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I’ve been thinking about context, context matters immensely with native. The wrong context with the right audience can be such a wasted opportunity. The way to understand what context is working best comes down to understanding how well the audience responded. And quite often that is more about post-click, as a headline can get someone to click, but do they read or engage? If they don’t, it’s a wasted click. Read on below to see how PulsePoint are seeking to address this – smart.
On another note, last night we ran our first NativeAdTalks in London with speakers from Dentsu Aegis Network, Nudge, Sharethrough, and Protein. This time we dug deeper into how to win at native content. If you weren’t able to make it, LMK and we’ll send you a recorded version of the event.
Notable Stories this Week
- Gizmodo expands by creating new verticals. Rather than being guided by social or search data, they are launching these based on insights from their own data. Sounds like smart organic growth to me.
- How I launched my first native ads and earned 400 new customers. What I like here, is putting the spotlight on the Reddit offering, an oft forgotten channel.
- Make branded content people actually care about on TV and online. A riff on creating good, interesting, creative content. I still think that native is really under-indexing here.
- PulsePoint launches Story, their content distribution platform with AI capabilities. Story enables advertisers to optimize to post-click behavior (yay!) nice one Andrew and team.
- Native Ads added to Microsoft’s Advertising SDK.
- Apple’s new version of Safari will block ad tracking and autoplay videos.
Deals/M&A
- PressBoard breaks the native ad investment drought (I don’t recall the last time we covered someone getting funded), announcing a $2m raise for their native ad marketplace and PressBot, a bot helping match advertisers to publishers. Nice one Jerrid and the team.
Campaign of the Week
- Here’s what happens with six different artists draw the same exact thing, BuzzFeed with Perrier. Reminds me of the Stella Artois work partnering with artists to create their bottles a couple of years back. Best practice with article + video too.
Smartest commentary
- “Having multiple pieces of content is like insurance, you can adjust to what works best” -Hollie-Blue Allum, Nudge (biased yes!) at #NativeAdTalks
- Ads that consider user flow, identify themselves clearly and are intent based have the best chance to feel relevant to a consumer and non-invasive. – Salim Tarazi, Director US Ad Operations, eBay
- “Audiences in digital are not captive; they’re self-directed and impatient to get on with their journeys—their stories. In digital, the reader (or user) is in control of the story. They don’t typically start their journeys by looking for brands. They start their journeys by looking for solutions to their problems.“ – James Mathewson, Technical Marketer, IBM
Datapoints of note
- Branded Content on YouTube sees 85% increase in viewership. I.e. brands are getting better at creating content.
Events
- [Awards] Get your entry in for Native Advertising Institute and also TheDrum.
For the next couple of weeks I’ll be flying around, and I’m always on the hunt for research reports to read on the flights, intel on native & content. If you’ve got anything up your sleeve do pass along. Even if it’s just an interesting learning.
Ta,
Ben
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