Native ads are known to be more viewable and generate more brand lift, as well as accruing higher purchase rates, than standard formats. And programmatic promises a personalised, relevant ad experience for viewers while giving marketers and publishers the optimum ROI. Combine the two and you have a match made in heaven, argues Greg Endean (pictured below), commercial director, Sociomantic Labs, in this op-ed piece.

Advertisers and publishers, two sides of one coin, share the same audience: the consumer. As a result, media is in a constant state of flux as both sides continually work on developing innovative ways to either win engagement from customers or entice their attention as readers.

Two such innovative mechanisms are the digital ecosystem’s rising stars: native advertising and programmatic-buying. At first blush, the two are worlds apart.

Greg Endean, Commercial Director, Sociomantic Labs

Native is an evolved notion of the advertorial, seen as Buzzfeed listicles, full editorial spreads, or other formats delivering a marketing message corresponding with the tone of its neighbouring content. Because producing an overall narrative — matching the look and feel of a web page, video, or app — is native’s cornerstone, marketing costs tend to be higher with an inability to scale. Meanwhile, programmatic buying is built on the very idea of efficient marketing spend, bringing new levels of precision for brands as they communicate with their customers.

Ultimately, both native advertising and programmatic advertising yearn to satisfy the advertiser’s needs to place their brand in front of their audience, and highlight their message using creatives that are attractive, visual, and very relevant. Putting its strengths together paves a new path that both publishers and advertisers can find mutually beneficial — so why hasn’t it been fully embraced yet?

Brands will have already implemented programmatic trading as a standard element of their well-optimised digital marketing plans. However, the same digital marketers leveraging programmatic may be reluctant to venture towards native. For every on-point Buzzfeed listicle or all-encompassing promotional editorial — such as that produced by Netflix and The Wall Street Journal — native has had a reputation for its near-farcical advertising. Who hasn’t come across that caricature of a portly belly, with hyperbolic signs pointing to it; or perhaps the ‘YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHO GARY BARLOW KISSED TO TURN HIS TEETH SO WHITE’ native ad? Who wants their brand associated with such spammy messages?

This all changes when programmatic technologies enter the picture. Truth of the matter is: programmatic buying – if 100% programmatic – raises the bar for native advertising.

As native (in all its various forms of content delivery) and programmatic trading each maintain firm footing within the digital space, there has been increasing opportunity to fuse the two together. The combination of native ad units with programmatic-buying on strategic, conceptual, and technological levels, offers brands the ability to integrate their communications into two crucial facets for effective advertising: relevance and personalisation.

Targeted advertising messages are placed amidst of-interest areas, such as content feed, product feed, or social feed. Further personalisation of banners lends advertisers the upper hand, allowing a specific message to reach the individual customer via live and dynamic content. What we see is the possibility to generate native experiences at scale thanks to an increased automation, a trademark of programmatic.

In short, when native advertising and programmatic technologies are combined, marketers are able to apply a user-centric approach to deliver advertising that seamlessly blends into publisher sites and apps where consumers spend their time.

But what of the preposterous messages to lose weight like this unbelievable list of celebrities who have managed to unbelievably get out of their cars or some such?

Proper application of programmatic native advertising relies on advanced technologies and collaboration between publisher, DSPs, and native advertising partners. For all our praise of innovative technology, a relationship tightens up the whole process, helping eliminate misleading adverts on behalf of brands and publishers. Relationships in place encourage all sides to action a strategy to accommodate programmatic native ads. On one side, advertisers need to consider how this stream of advertising can supplement their digital marketing plans, as ever, at sustainable costs, as is the advantage of 100% programmatic technologies. And on the other side of the coin, publishers will want to maintain their revenue-based interests by extending their inventory, particularly if Tier-A advertisers are to fill up the space. In the familiar tug-of-war between advertiser and publisher, both will tend to agree that spammy messaging does not work to anyone’s favour for fear of user-perception.

Sensing the huge potential for the industry, and the consequent need for regulation, the IAB UK recently updated their Content & Native Definitions framework to clearly distinguish the types of native distribution ad units – that is, “automated and programmatic (scale) content delivery”, with consideration for other classifications of native advertising, and whether it is based on media owner revenues or advertiser-owned content.

Native advertising, on its own, is reaching new heights. When combined with the scalability of programmatic, we see another case for an industry-wide win-win-win.

Marketers benefit from reaching their customers where they’re consuming content; publishers from scalability and, most importantly, the consumer experiences non-intrusive ads whilst engaging with content they enjoy in-feed, in-app, video, or on the web.