Every company has points of tension: budgets versus wish lists, marketing versus sales. But what appear to be opposing forces can end up being a complementary pair. The same holds true for native versus programmatic advertising. While each fulfills a specific role, both can contribute to revenue. According to a study by content and commerce company Purch—conducted by Advertiser Perceptions—42%of high-level U.S. marketer and agency advertising decision makers plan to purchase native advertising through programmatic platforms within the next six months and 79% expect to do the same within the next 12.
But if companies want native and programmatic advertising to coexist, they have to know each of their strengths. For instance, native has truly offset the balance of the advertising world. According to Purch, spend on native advertising and sponsored content is expected to triple from 2013 to 2015. Many advertisers use native advertising for branding purposes (71%) or to achieve sales or conversions (65%).
So what does native advertising look like today? Purch reports that 73% of advertisers will incorporate video this year and 62% will include mobile. Forty-three percent will also integrate contests into their native advertising and just over one third (36%) will feature games. In addition, advertisers are looking to make native advertising and editorial content more integrated. For example, 47% of advertisers are extremely likely to execute in-feed sponsored content in an editorial-like fashion on the hosting site, according to Purch’s data, compared to 28% who are extremely likely to use in-feed campaigns that link to offsite landing pages.
As for programmatic advertising, 78% of high-level decision makers surveyed leverage it across their campaigns. However, agencies and marketers seem to be attracted to different benefits. For example, agencies are more intrigued by the increased efficiencies of programmatic advertising than marketers (46% compared to 36%), while marketers find reaching targets without waste to be more appealing (45% versus 24%). Yet, almost all survey respondents agree that audience insight and data is the most important criteria when selecting a programmatic partner (91%). Other main criteria included ease of use (90%), credible metrics (87%), audience quality (87%), transparency (87%), inventory guarantees (87%) and access to first-party data (81%).
Still, organizational challenges can disrupt the peace for both forms of advertising. According to Purch, insufficient reporting and ROI metrics is the biggest struggle for native advertisers (46%), followed by misalignment between campaign and marketing objectives (38%), time and resource commitments (26%), and native programs being “insufficiently turnkey” (24%). As for programmatic obstacles, the main issues include a lack of premium inventory (54%) and insufficient targeting to preferred editorial brands and audiences (37%).
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