Some of my most popular posts on this blog are those pertaining to myths in the marketing or advertising spheres. However, I don’t publish that many of these because there are already a ton of them out there and they get to be quite redundant. I don’t want to contribute to redundancy any more than I have to.
One major native advertising myth to dispel
I do have a myth to dispel about native advertising, one I’ve actually never read about online, at least not yet.
The biggest myth in native advertising, in my opinion, is that it is scalable.
Native advertising, done right, is not scalable.
Native advertising is not scalable
Of course big and small companies seek scale to reduce costs and native isn’t immune to that objective.
There are limited ways in which native can be scalable. The biggest method to scale your native ad initiative is to publish or promote it through as big a media outlet as possible. That way you have the potential to reach more people faster than on a smaller media outlet.
Repurposing the same native ad, or a similar one, across multiple sites is how most organisations attempt to scale this relatively new ad possibility. However, this is very tricky because web users surf the web for similar content and are likely to encounter your native ad, or content, at more than one site which will immediately spell ADVERTISING over it. It will show up in their mind’s eye like a “stay away” sign.
It is a best practice for native ads to declare themselves as ads, or to spell out who this is from, namely the company, or advertiser. Consumers know it’s an ad. However, so long as it is relatively unique, it holds editorial legitimacy for the consumer.
Scaling native advertising is a recipe for failure.
What’s your opinion on native advertising scalability?
Do you have any particular digital marketing or advertising myths you’d like me to validate or dispel? Please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comment section below, or contact me directly.
