Native vs. Programmatic Advertising: Knowing The Difference

Native Advertising

What do you think of when you hear "Native Advertising"? Many people (including myself) would think of content marketing. Although they are similar, Native Marketing is not content marketing and it is important to understand how they are different. Content Marketing Institute wrote, "Native advertising is simply one way marketers can distribute content". The terminology is what is important to differentiate because, in the industry, all of these terms sound so similar The Content Marketing Institute goes into detail about how the two are different in an article that they wrote.

Native Advertising is "pay-to-play". Businesses and brands pay for space where their content is placed on a specific platform that is not their own. The content is usually information-based and highly targeted to a specific audience. A native advertisement, however, is not a traditional al that only promotes the company's product or service. Native advertisements are placed on "rented" space on someone else's content distribution platform that doesn't disrupt the user experience. In other words, the way the ad is delivered does not impede the user's normal behavior in the particular channel. Brands who choose to use native advertising want their content to look as similar as possible to the third-party's content. This makes their content look native and authentic which makes it easier to sell. The authenticity also makes it difficult for consumers to determine what is an ad or "sponsored" and what is not. This is important to understand because this could erode trust between the consumer and your brand. To avoid this from happening, there are usually warning labels around the content to show that it is, in fact, an ad or sponsored.

"If you pay for placement, it's advertising. If you pay for placement of valuable, relevant content in a format similar to the third-party, it's native advertising. If you don't pay for placement, the content is not advertising." -Content Marketing Institute

Example of Native Advertising

Gimlet Creative is a podcast which partners with brands and produces narrative audio with integrated ad campaigns and sponsored shows. They partnered with Tinder (the dating app) and created a sponsored podcast called Define The Relationship (DTR). This show, according to Gimlet, "dives deep into the weird, wonderful and hilarious aspects of dating in an Internet-obsessed world". Nazanin Rafsanjani, the creative director at Gimlet Media and head of Gimlet Creative explained, "It's not just about Tinder, it's about all the things people are confronting on Tinder or on any other dating app". This is why native advertising can work so well for a brand. One aspect that is tricky about native advertising is that people won't want to listen if they know it's an ad or sounds like an ad. Gimlet has partnered with a number of large brands and have created

"No one's gonna listen to it if it feels like an ad" -Nazanin Rafsanjani

Programmatic Advertising

Aside from constantly evolving, programmatic advertising ranges from online, video, streaming, voice and TV. This type of advertising may seem overwhelming but let's take a more narrow look at what this exactly means. Digital-Me-Up provided a definition that Ameet Ranadive came up with, "Programmatic Marketing is the practice of implementing an automated set of business rules to efficiently target your most valuable customers and prospects with personalized ads". In order to be more reactive, marketers are able to use automation to decrease delays induced by a human chain link in the process. Ameet Ranadive also explained that efficient targeting will help "eliminate wasted impressions and clicks. Thus, you only show ads to users who have internet, and who are likely to take the desired action". By using data, the automation will determine the perfect ad using customization and this will increase the desired action by the customers.

"Programmatic is buying digital advertising space automatically, with computers using data to decide which ads to buy and how much to pay for them." -Kenneth Kulbok

Programmatic Advertising: Success Story

Kellogg realized that traditional marketing wasn't allowing them to reach their goals so they embraced programmatic buying, specifically Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager, and access the ability to stay at the forefront of the changing consumer behavior. Kellogg's goals were to "drive awareness and persuasion toward Kellogg brands" and they needed to figure a way to achieve this. Kellogg was able to increase viewability rates to over 70% and improved targeting by 2-3X with Google's programmatic buying and measurement solutions. This programmatic platform was able to help Kellogg target and manage their ads more effectively.