Driving Quantifiable Results in a Seamlessly Integrated Environment

With many publishers and advertisers acclimating to life in the digital era, native advertising has grown into one of the fastest hottest areas in online marketing. Bridging the gap between content marketing and traditional advertising, native advertising gives brands an opportunity to reach consumers with carefully crafted messages that blend with the native content surrounding them. But as advertisers move to capitalize on this modern take on the advertorial, they remain focused on the basics of advertising: Is my message driving the desired result?

In many ways, traditional advertising was meant to disrupt—pull someone’s attention from something and show them something different. So as advertisers and marketers begin to think about creating messages that integrate rather than disrupt, it’s no surprise that they’re going to want to know if they’re effective in resonating with consumers, especially as they invest more.

At the end of 2014, 26% of advertisers said they would spend more on native advertising this year than in 2013. Agencies felt even stronger about the format, as 39% said they planned to increase their native ad spend this year. Native advertising is such a buzz that some platforms have opted to dedicate themselves to it, including Instinctive, which was recently tasked with syndicating brand content in real-time for a consumer electronics manufacturer.

The campaign included more than 150 unique pieces that were delivered using three different native advertising formats: semi-native, fully native and in-feed video. But Instinctive didn’t want to wait until the campaign ended to measure its effectiveness. In fact, given the dynamics of online media and the very competitive nature of consumer electronics, the company wanted to be able to gauge performance and make changes during the campaign to maximize brand lift.

Instinctive’s ability to fine-tune its campaign along the way helped ensure strong results—and brand lift. In the end, brand lift among people who were exposed to the campaign was almost 90% higher than among those who weren’t exposed.

Native advertising can be a very powerful tool to positively influence brand opinion. However, advertisers need to understand if their campaign is driving the desired result and resonating with consumers. Without this measurement, marketers could easily be wasting their spend on campaign elements that aren’t going to have the desired effect.