6 Reasons to Incorporate Native Ads into your Marketing Strategy

Hello!

Building a strong digital marketing strategy isn’t a simple task. You can’t simply copy the techniques and channels used by other brands—the effectiveness of any approach depends on numerous factors unique to each company.

SMM, SEO, and content marketing are applied by virtually every business, creating highly competitive environments. Therefore, you can’t limit your marketing efforts to traditional methods. If you want to boost brand visibility, you need something that helps you rise above the noise.

In this post, we explore one advertising technique that is sometimes overlooked by marketers: native advertising. This approach delivers benefits to companies of all sizes. Sounds promising? Read on to discover more about native advertising and why you should incorporate it into your marketing strategy.

---

What is native advertising?

---

Native advertising is an online marketing method that uses paid ads designed to match the look and feel of the website on which they appear, blending seamlessly into the surrounding content.

We highlight two major types of native ads: in-feed native ads and content recommendation widgets.

In-feed ads appear among editorial content on publishers’ websites. They may include in-feed social ads, in-feed content recommendations, promoted listings, and similar formats.

Content recommendation widgets are displayed below or next to articles on publishers’ websites and are typically labeled “sponsored content” or “you may also like.”

If you implement native advertising in your growth campaigns, it is important to plan out your paid advertising plan for your business.

---

Why should you use native ads?

---

Compared with traditional display ads that have been used for more than two decades, native advertising remains a relatively young technique. Still, it was projected that native ads would account for 64.8% of total display ad spending in the US in 2026. To understand why this shift is happening, let’s examine the major benefits of native advertising.

---

Native advertising is a powerful tool for content distribution

---

If you’ve been involved in marketing for any length of time, content marketing is by no means an unknown concept. This approach involves creating and distributing content to attract, nurture, and retain your target audience.

While the content creation process is relatively straightforward—you need to understand your audience and respond to their needs—content distribution requires significantly more effort. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, notes that he spends 20% of his time on content creation and 80% on content promotion. You can’t argue with CMI’s success.

Native advertising excels at content distribution. It is built for content and allows you to place your material in front of the most relevant audiences. You can easily align native advertising campaigns with the content marketing funnel, matching different stages by the type of content you promote.

For example, to reach people in the awareness stage, combine educational or entertaining content with basic targeting options such as location or device type. For campaigns aimed at the consideration or decision stage, use more product-focused content (case studies, landing pages) alongside advanced targeting like lookalike audiences or retargeting.

---

It delivers significant results fast

---

Although it takes time to identify the optimal combination of campaign content, high-performing creatives, and effective targeting, the results arrive quickly. While traditional marketing approaches excel over the long term, native advertising delivers measurable outcomes rapidly.

---

Native advertising is effective for whatever goal you set

---

Whatever marketing goal you set, a well-designed native ad campaign can help you achieve it. We single out four main types of marketing goals:

• Build brand awareness
• Acquire leads
• Drive sales
• Strengthen loyalty

In the sections below, we explore how native advertising campaigns align with each of these objectives.

---

Build brand awareness

If you want your target audience to recognize your brand and associate it with specific goods or services, you need to build brand awareness. When successful, your company becomes the first that comes to mind when prospects encounter a problem you can solve.

Native advertising is highly effective for increasing brand visibility and reaching new audiences. Many brands use native ads to achieve awareness goals by promoting engaging articles and videos on popular websites, reaching wide yet highly relevant audiences. For a successful brand awareness campaign, create and promote top-of-funnel content that educates, entertains, or answers common audience questions.

---

Acquire leads

Native advertising also helps drive more leads. It allows you to attract prospects by promoting landing pages that encourage readers to download an app, sign up for a newsletter, or take any other action that connects them with your brand.

Here’s how 8fit approaches lead acquisition with native advertising.

The company promotes its fitness and nutrition app by offering readers the chance to explore exercises that can be done at home. The landing page features workout videos, explanations of their effectiveness, user reviews, and a clear call to action.

---

Drive sales

Although used less frequently when the goal is a direct sale, native advertising can still contribute meaningfully to the sales process.

For instance, promoting iPhone cases with native ads works well because the advertiser can target users by device type and consistently reach a relevant audience. Campaigns aimed at driving sales tend to perform best when they target people already interested in purchasing, such as website visitors or retargeted audiences. If your customer journey is complex, using native ads to generate leads that later convert can sometimes be more effective.

---

Strengthen loyalty

Native advertising also offers an excellent opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty. What emotions do you want customers to associate with your brand? With a native ad campaign, you can build a positive brand image.

Coca-Cola, for example, does not need brand awareness campaigns—everyone knows the brand. Instead, it focuses on retaining loyalty and evoking positive emotions. Coca-Cola has cultivated an image as a “festive drink,” and its native ad campaigns reinforce this positioning.

---

Native advertising is easily implemented and scaled

Native advertising is straightforward to execute. With numerous native advertising platforms available, simply select the one that matches your goals—your first campaign setup will take only a few minutes.

While creating custom content for native campaigns is effective, it is not required. You can launch your first campaign using existing marketing content. When you decide to scale, you can develop dedicated content types for future campaigns.

---

Native ads don’t hurt the user experience

---

Think about the last time you left a website because of ads. Were there too many? Did a floating ad obscure half the page? Did repetitive pop-ups become annoying? This won’t happen with native ads.

Traditional banner ads can fail to achieve campaign goals and create a negative impression of your brand. Native ads, by contrast, integrate naturally into the surrounding environment and never disrupt the user experience.

---

Native ads perform better than typical banner ads

---

Native advertising is simply more effective. It delivers higher click-through rates, stronger engagement metrics, and a better overall impression than banner ads.

Here’s what the data shows:

⚫ According to Sharethrough’s research, native ads registered an 18% higher lift in purchase intent than traditional banner ads.

⚫ The average CTR for native ads across industries is 0.2%.

⚫ 70% of users said they would rather discover products or services through content than through traditional advertisements.

⚫ Two out of three Generation X and Z consumers said they trusted branded content more than other types of traditional advertising.

To better understand what to expect from your own campaign, review native advertising benchmarks for your industry.

---

Take the leap and start launching native advertising campaigns

Native advertising has already proven effective across many niches. If the benefits outlined above resonate with you, now is the right time to launch your first campaign.

As long as you develop quality campaigns that promote relevant content and put the audience first, you will see the significant results that native advertising can deliver.

Thank you!
Subscribe to our newsletter! Join us on social networks!
See you!