Native advertising is a company-sponsored article, image or post that blends in with the news, features, reviews and other editorial content of a digital or print publication. It’s become one of the most popular and effective marketing tactics in the life sciences sector.
According to Business Insider, native advertising will make up 74 percent of all display ad revenue by 2021, up from a 56 percent share in 2016. Written content and video content are the fastest growing segments of native advertising, as reported by the Native Advertising Institute.
Native advertising offers a number of advantages to marketers and their audiences alike:
- It’s not disruptive. When done right, native advertising seamlessly integrates with the user’s online experience, making the audience more amenable to the ad’s presence and more likely to interact with the content.
- It’s less vulnerable to ad blockers. Many users have installed ad blocking software that prevents pop-ups and intrusive banners from displaying. Native advertising, properly formatted and placed, complies with the editorial structure and standards of the publisher and will not be blocked.
- Native advertising can establish a bond with your audience. Brands that use native advertising have an opportunity to create a positive connection with their audience.
- It fits well within the life sciences sector. Researchers engaged in the buying process are interested in content that is informative and educational and that can help them make better purchase decisions. Native advertising fits right in with the researcher’s mission. It may be advertising, but it isn’t flashy, annoying or promotional.
Follow these best practices
If not done correctly, native advertising can backfire on you. According to research from the content marketing firm Contently, there is significant confusion on the part of readers as to what constitutes an article and what constitutes an ad, and consumers often have a difficult time identifying the brand associated with a piece of native advertising. Forty-eight percent have felt deceived upon realizing a piece of content was sponsored by a brand.
You don’t want to be perceived as deceptive—that can only hurt your brand. To achieve the advantages of native advertising, without getting hampered by mistakes, following these tips:
1. Commit to full transparency and clear disclosure
Don’t use any type of native advertising that isn’t clearly labeled as such. According to the FTC, “Advertising and promotional messages that are not identifiable as advertising to consumers are deceptive if they mislead consumers into believing they are independent, impartial, or not from the sponsoring advertiser itself.”
The FTC guidelines are concerned less with what type of content is acceptable in native ads and more on displaying and labelling the content as advertisements. Publishers often identify native advertising using phrases such as “sponsored content”, “paid content”, or simply “advertisement.”
2. Use your company logo
The use of the your logo not only helps clarify the publisher-advertiser relationship it also helps build brand awareness and visibility for your company in a relatively unobtrusive way. Studies have shown that using a logo helps with user recall of the content and brand.
3. Focus on quality content
Life sciences researchers seek high-quality, educational content to help them stay up-to-date on trends and products, and to make informed decisions. The Contently research found that consumers who read native ads that they identified as high quality reported a significantly higher level of trust for the sponsoring brand. Keep away from promotional messages in your native advertising campaigns. Focus on what your audience wants.
4. Experiment with video ads
Native advertising doesn’t only come in article format. Video is also an excellent and effective medium to use for native advertising. All the same guidelines that apply to text apply to video: transparency, disclosure, branding, quality. Also, users tend to prefer shorter videos, 15 seconds on the lightning end and up to three minutes for epic story telling.
5. Work with a reputable publisher
One thing you don’t want is to have your native advertising appear on sites that aren’t appropriate for your company or message, or on sites that don’t comply with FTC guidelines for native advertising.
Look for a media partner or publisher that can get your content in front of your target audience. That might seem like an obvious thing to do, but some publishers don’t offer careful targeting—or clear labelling—of native advertising. The right publishing partner will also help drive qualified traffic to your native advertising content, which will increase brand awareness and opportunities to generate leads.
Biocompare offers life sciences marketers several effective options to integrate native advertising into their marketing strategy:
- Future Lab Content Hub is one of the most innovative and relevant information sources in the life sciences market. It presents informative sponsored content in an interactive environment to keep our readers informed of the latest developments in a given area of research.
- Bench Tip articles address a particular area of research and are designed to help researchers improve a particular laboratory task or technique. By sponsoring Bench Tip articles, marketers can help position their companies as thought leaders or experts in particular disciplines.
Biocompare native advertising campaigns give you access to a highly-targeted audience, prominent sponsoring and branding recognition and promotion, contact information for registered users who access gated content, and comprehensive monthly reporting on the performance of your native advertising efforts. Find out more at the Biocompare Online Media Kit.