Emerging rules of native will fuel its growth
Earlier this year Bauer Media launched The Debrief, a new multi-platform brand aimed at the constantly connected 20-something woman. With native advertising at its heart, Bauer’s advertising lead, Richard Dunmall, shares his key learnings.
Native advertising is centre stage in our conversations with advertisers and agency partners this summer. It is fast accelerating from something that was a buzz topic to a genuine area of growth which will transform the way publishers will provide compelling routes for brands to engage with audiences and, in particular, the 20-something consumer.
At a macro-level, publishers (and even more so media owners with multi-platform brands) are brilliantly placed to deliver native advertising campaigns. Here’s why.
Firstly, it represents a new way of doing what we’ve always done really well.
It is taking the discipline of activities like advertorials and sponsorship and promotions to a new level, challenging publishers to create content on behalf of advertisers that has a genuine fit and connection with the audience they value.
Secondly, digital platforms allow for even more creative ways to express the brand’s messages through content. Newer players like BuzzFeed have pushed the boundaries for all media owners and in the process have reminded us what we are really good at.
Native advertising is a broad-ranging opportunity for publishers who already engage with brands through content. Our media brands operate at the heart of popular culture and as a result our content teams are already incredibly comfortable engaging with brands. Grazia writes about retail brands every day, Heat’s content regularly focuses on what celebrities are wearing or buying.
Media brands like these consistently talk about high street brands. What’s interesting is that because of the commentator position at the heart of popular culture, there is no ‘church and state’ issue facing our content teams.
I think this is a crucial difference to news brand like The Guardian, for example, where a food review journalist may face a challenge to create native copy about a brand like Dolmio.
Our new launch for 20-something women, The Debrief, leads the way on how native advertising works for brands with this vital audience. This began with audience insight that informed the product during its development phase when it became clear this audience has grown up in a world where the boundaries between content and brands are blurred.
They are comfortable with branded messaging, provided we follow a set of rules. Our insight helped us to define these rules for this emerging advertising technique:
– The content must be relevant
– The content must be well-targeted
– The content must provide a useful value-exchange
– The content must present a clear benefit
If we follow these rules there should be no friction. This H&M campaign is an example of what I mean. Native advertising will only go wrong when it doesn’t follow these rules and at that point it will stand out and be rejected by the consumer, if the content team hasn’t rejected it first.
These rules are applicable to branded content on other platforms too. It has worked well in radio S&P for a number of years where DJ talent has delivered brand messaging in an engaging way with the audience.
Campaigns on Absolute Radio where Sky has sponsored Rock N Roll Football and Wickes has integrated into The Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show are two such examples. The radio market-place is comfortable with this approach and we are seeing increased appetite from advertisers and agencies for this type of campaign activity.
So, while it is still early days on native advertising, I am certain it will deliver on its promise to be a hugely exciting growth area for publishers. It touches on all types of advertising clients, from retailers to entertainment companies, from FMCG brands to the biggest household names.
We are in the great position that there is no push-back at all from our content teams to embrace this technique but we are working on making sure we have the right content and commercial structure in place to activate it.
There is a new demand on our content teams to execute it successfully every time and there is a natural evolution to reflect this in the way we are working. Our audience of 20-something consumers in particular want native advertising, demand it and are proving through their engagement that it is a highly successful way for brands to talk to them.
If an advertiser brand is considering going native for the first time, here are key points to consider:
– A collaborative approach between agency, client and content owner is essential
– All three parties must understand the brief with clarity and brilliant sensitivity
– The brand and agency must buddy up with the content team of the publisher to be confident they can deliver and at the same time the publisher must prove to the brand and agency that it is worth their trust
– Brands must have the courage to try something new in a rapidly evolving market and be prepared to fail, learn and refine activity quickly
– Any ‘deal’ between the brand / agency and the consumer has to be transparent and relevant
Then, when it comes to testing the success of a native advertising activity, we have developed a clear set of measures:
– Social engagement is essential – how is the audience sharing and engaging with the content
– Listen to and compare the results to the ROI metrics from client and agency
– Build in embedded tracking technologies linked to performance metrics
The most exciting thing though for me about native advertising, apart from its rapid growth, is how intuitive it can be.
Ultimately, a brand owner will know if it is being true to the brand. Great brand owners will know instinctively if the native advertising content is going to resonate with the audience. Once they’ve tried it and seen the success, it will become a natural part of every advertising campaign.
Richard Dunmall is managing director of advertising at Bauer Media.
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