By Adam Wakefield
Abdinor began by saying native advertising belonged to everybody, with the IAB having crafted recommendations for the form instead of hard and fast rules, as they were not a regulatory body but rather one that sought to encourage the growth of the digital marketplace.
He then moved onto the topic at hand, beginning with what native was and what it was not.
In brief, native advertising is not advertorial, is not going away, is no longer disputed in newsrooms as a form of content, offers advertisers a meaningful vehicle and is giving publishers meaningful revenue streams.
“I’ve seen in the last two years massive acceptance and buy-in by editorial publishers,” Abdinor explained.
“It’s a marketing and advertising tool. Within marketing and advertising, you have content marketing. Content marketing is using content to do marketing. One of the things within content marketing is native adverting.”
There is also advertorial, and other forms of content marketing, such as blogs and newsletters. Both native advertising and advertorial are either branded or sponsored content, with the latter and former terms being interchangeable in Abdinor’s view.
“The one thing about native advertising is there is no sitting on the fence. It has to live within certain environments otherwise it is not native advertising. Like a chameleon, it has to mimic its surroundings. It has to be placed inside a certain environment which gives it all of its power,” he explained.
On native advertising’s pros, Abdinor said native was essentially about storytelling.
“Brands all have stories. It’s from the elevator pitch to the mission statement and they are dying to tell the stories,” he said.
Native advertising has to be about mimicking a trusted environment, where readers have some level of trust in the publication and the publishers. However, it cannot be deceptive. Native advertising discloses that it is branded or sponsored content, with its purpose being to give users content that was entertaining or informative.
It has to have value and one of the reasons the IAB does not want to set standards is because it is their belief that in the free market, quality would rise to the surface, which is positive for both consumers and publishers.
Other native advertising positives listed by Abdinor included being a means of avoiding ad blocking, harnessing the production skills and processes followed by publishers, and accessing PR budgets where applicable.
Ad blocking is not yet a problem in South Africa, with their use sitting below 3%, but in developed digital markets, such as the US, their use is sitting at over 20%, if not more.
“Ad blockers don’t see native as an advert. We are not sweating that much about ad blocking [in South Africa] but native is a way to get out that risky space where you will get blocked,” Abdinor said.
The perfect native environment is one where the copy gets honed by the editorial staff, the editor has a stake in it, the writers write it and have a say in the article’s outcome with it going through standard work flows.
“Once editorial takes ownership of that piece of content, they treat it differently,” Abdinor said.
“Because it’s tied into the editorial workflow, it gets editorial love and attention. Advertorial, let’s face it, it gets put in sometimes as a bit of a grudge. No one takes care of it.”
Abdinor posited a theory of his to the room: that native advertising sat at the nexus of paid, earned and owned media, in that it could perform all these respective roles at the same time.
He then moved onto the strategic picture, suggesting that native had an advantage because the user’s appetite for content was always going to increase. While this had negatively affected editorial quality, it created an opportunity for native content.
It also has potential to be an untapped revenue stream for publishers who could service native content.
Check out part 2
here.