Native-Advertising

Founded in 1966, Edmunds is a one-stop online resource for automotive information including car prices, dealer inventory listings, national incentives database, and vehicle comparisons. Using images, videos, news articles, blog posts, and discussion boards, the company caters to users looking to learn more about SUVs, sedans, minivans, wagons, trucks, luxury cars, coupes, crossovers, electric cars, and hatchbacks.Over the years, Edmunds has launched: a free online magazine for auto-enthusiasts, Car Week—a week-long event to connect car dealers with customers, a True Market Value Used Vehicle Appraiser that displays the actual transaction prices for used cars, and a hackathon event called Hackomotive to invite new ideas to scale the company. In their first-ever TV commercial that aired in 2012, Edmunds introduced the character of the ‘Car Head’—a company representative with a car for a head—who encourages consumers to avoid haggling with car dealers by using the company’s ‘Prime Promise’ tool to compare vehicle costs to secure the best deals. According to Datalogix, 59% of U.S. car buyers use Edmunds while making a purchasing decision, and more than half of their website visits actually result in a conversion.Let’s take a closer look at their overall advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Edmunds has spent a whopping $12.6M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority being dedicated to Outbrain ($11.6M), content distribution and native advertising platform. Additionally, Taboola ($735.2K), Direct Buy ($87.5K), and Yahoo Gemini Native ($79.7K) are also advertising networks that they’ve invested in. By comparison, Kelley Blue Book (KBB), a direct competitor to Edmunds, also invests heavily in native advertising with an ad spend of $9.5M on Taboola and $1.9M on Outbrain for the same time periodAlmost 99% of their ads are native—most of which run on mobile devices and have a 406% chance of a higher click-through-rate (CTR) than banner ads. Why, you ask? Simple! Banner ads are intended to show up at a designated place. On small screens, this can often interrupt the surrounding messages and in turn, the overall user experience of the platform they’re displayed on. On the other hand, native ads tend to blend in with the look, feel, and style of the website; and offer a distraction-free value proposition to the consumers. In an attempt to close intrusive ads, most people end up accidentally clicking on them—which is fairly understandable, keeping in mind the touch screen nature of smartphones. On the contrary, the clicks on native ads are a result of genuine interest and have a higher chance of a conversion. Publishers From the very beginning, Edmunds has stuck to advertising with the same publishers—CNN ($1.5), Rolling Stone ($980.9K), ESPN ($617.6K), The Hill ($393.7K) and Daily Caller ($379.7K). They’ve also advertised with The Verge ($334.7K), SBNation ($331.6K), Politico ($307.9K), Fox News ($298.4K), and Curbed ($252.1K). Quick side note: Kelley Blue Book uses more or less the same publishers as Edmunds. CNN ($256.2K), Slate ($245.3K), NBC News ($222.1K), Android Central ($219.1K), and NBC Sports ($186.1K) have been their top publishers in the last 6 months. On CNN, the ads appear largely on the homepage and on posts that fall under the ‘tech’, ‘business’ and ‘success’ category. One can assume that these pages get reasonable traffic, which explains why most of Edmunds’ ads have been running on and off with the same publishers for more than 600 days. ...

According to an Adobe survey, 45% of respondents had no desire to view ads. The main reason? Most ads are intrusive. People get hit by an average of 5,000 ads per day! After a while, they just become blind to those ads. Native advertising solves this huge psychological challenge of intrusion. These are ads that are designed to blend into the natural content of a website. The automobile and travel industries are the top industries using native advertising. ...

According to Statista, 8% of 18– to 29-year-olds are in a committed relationship with a partner or spouse they met online. Using a dating app has become a meaningful and common method for people to find the love of their life. Of course, there are many more people out there using these various apps looking for casual dating, friendship, and other things. Within this pool of eager singles, you have a plethora of subcategories for different niches and preferences. ...

Remember when the advertising strategy of choice used to be the “one size fits all” approach? There were only a handful of TV channels and newspapers to choose from so everyone saw the same ads regardless of their interests. Fortunately for advertisers — and customers — advertising has evolved to be able to show audiences exactly what they need. In fact, online advertising has emerged as the most pervasive form of advertising, especially because it allows for more refined targeting. Now audiences see ads they can relate to. ...

One of your best traffic sources could be something that you’re completely ignoring, even though it’s right under your nose. Businesses always want to know where the next best traffic source is coming from, and, although that’s going to vary somewhat from field to field, one stands out as a pretty powerful traffic driver that’s overlooked. It’s Content Discovery Networks. These are something that everyone is familiar with but many people haven’t considered using as a business tool. ...

Men’s underwear is a billion dollar industry, and it’s on track to grow even bigger.A recent Men’s Underwear Market Report predicts that “increasing numbers of metrosexual men in the U.S. [are] anticipated to fuel revenue growth of the boxer shorts segment during the period 2016-2026.” With so much market growth on the horizon, we decided to do a deep-dive into how Mack Weldon, a popular men’s underwear maker, runs its display campaigns. Last year, Mack Weldon made the news when they reportedly doubled underwear sales through podcast advertising. This kind of marketing savvy makes them the perfect candidate for a post like this.Here are our observations…. ...

There I was, reading about the Westworld finale on Variety (don’t worry, no spoilers), when I’m offered six more articles to read. They all look pretty interesting, but only two actually have to do with TV, while the others are about fashion and celebrity. So, how did an ad for a Macy’s sale end up in my article about an HBO show about robots? The power of native advertising. ...

Note: This is part 1 in a three-part series that covers which landing page styles are converting for direct response advertisers on the most popular Native networks. This post covers landing pages that currently work on Taboola. Part 2 (Revcontent) and part 3 (Outbrain) will be published in the upcoming weeks. Have you tested running traffic on Taboola? If you haven’t, then you’re really missing out. Some of the largest direct response advertisers spend upwards of $100k/month on Taboola alone. Taboola reaches over one billion unique visitors monthly, and they recently acquired ConvertMedia, a native video advertising company. ...

Since 2014, we’ve seen a massive rise in the number of advertisers testing out Native Ads. Looking inside Adbeat, the majority of Native advertisers fit into a few categories: Direct Response (information products and supplements) Digital publishers (viral news and celebrity gossip sites) Big brands However, we’re seeing more eCommerce sites throw their hats into the ring. eCommerce sites tend to stick with tried and true networks, like Google AdWords. This continues to be the trend. ...

Looking for ways to drive more traffic and bring in more ad revenue? Look no further than Answers.com for inspiration. Answers.com is a large Q&A community that was created back in 1999. Originally called “GuruNet”, the company went public in 2004 and later changed their name to Answers.com. Although they’ve been around for close to two decades, much of their recent growth has been fueled by content promotion through Native Ad networks. ...