Do you know that more and more people are willing to pay for subscriptions just to avoid looking at ads?
It should come to no surprise that consumer hate being bombarded by ads, especially embedded ads that are irrelevant and adds no value. Consumers are taking measures to avoid ads at all cost these days – statics has shown that adblocker users are on the rise – and advertisers know that.
This trend has forced advertiser to get creative to lure their target audience. And their solutions? Native Ads.
Native ads are not new. Buzzfeed is one of the pioneers of commerce content creator or “native advertising”. An article that reads “14 People Making The Best Of Bad Situations” might seem like just a typical Buzzfeed-style article but take a closer look and you will see that the post is sponsored by Volkswagen. In fact, almost all of Buzzfeed contents are sponsored post. Some may argue that native advertising is a deceiving to the consumer –it wastes consumer’s time to read an article, only to find out later that those are just promotional message to get them to make a purchase.
But to be fair, a piece like the Volkswagen post is not harmful at all because Volkswagen was just hoping to market the message “Get in. Get Happy.” The real issues are native ads like this: Clinton Corruption, an ad paid by Donald J. Trump on POLITICO telling “truth” about Hilary Clinton that disguised like a news article and a paid content ran in The Atlantic congratulating the Church of Scientology and its leader milestone” years (that has since removed following backlash), where publishers are compromising their reputation to ran sponsored content.
Unfortunately, the trend for native ads is rising. In 2016, The New York Times also jump on the bandwagon of native advertising to move away from standardized “banner” ads. It’s not hard to understand why The New York Times is trying to keep away from traditional ads. Research conducted by the Dusseldorf Institute for Competition Economics found out that “a 10% increase in ad time will reduce the audience size by 15%.” Consumers are really actively shunning away from ads content.
However, successful examples have shown that sponsored ads are not necessarily bad if publishers maintain their editorial standard. A well done sponsored ad is one that is relevant, educational and delivers facts.
Stühmeier, T., & Wenzel, T. (2011). Getting beer during commercials: Adverse effects of ad-avoidance. Information Economics And Policy, 23(1), 98-106. doi: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2010.09.002