Native advertising is providing a window for companies to focus on valuable content and the consumer experience says Justin Choi, founder and CEO of Nativo.

Native advertising has provided a story-telling medium in digital that enables marketers to move the conversation beyond empty clicks and impressions, to focus on more meaningful areas such as consumer engagement, user experience and influence.

Our industry has tackled the necessary discussions around disclosure and transparency, and we are seeing more and more examples of native campaign executions that highlight how compelling and impactful branded content can be to connecting consumer attention to brand storytelling – a critical part of digital advertising that’s been missing for far too long.

Native is a lighthouse for media companies in an otherwise rough sea of declining monetization and ad tech that dilutes and disregards the true value of publisher brands.

Early days

The early adopters of native, and even the early majority, are all the progressives within brand, agency and publisher organizations. As with any new trend, the forward thinkers and visionaries move first, others follow fast and that momentum pulls in the late adopters. Native is just barely entering the fast follower stage, so it’s still early days.

Native is not what’s most important to brands in all of this; content marketing is the macro trend, and native distribution is the complimentary trend that enables brands to put paid media behind their content efforts. Native distribution is critical because it enables organic, natural discovery and engagement with content. Still, content is what enables branding dollars to shift online, enables creativity to fully blossom within a digital environment and allows brand marketers to meaningfully connect, influence and touch the hearts and minds of consumers versus interrupt, sell and convert.

Broad adoption in the US

Native is quickly achieving broad adoption in the US. 90 per cent of US publishers plan to offer native products by 2015, brands and agencies are submitting native-specific RFPs, programmatic buyers are running due diligence to select their dedicated native buying platforms, etc. Native has advanced at light speed in the US especially when you compare to the slower pace of innovation that took place with digital display, video, and mobile.

From a macro level, and true to form with most digital ad innovations, Canada and the UK are fast following the US, with Germany and other Western European markets showing signs of life. APAC is also experiencing spurts of activity, and smaller international territories are just now starting to pay attention and get their arms around native trends and best practices. The initial gating issue with slower moving territories is publisher comfort and adoption of the practice. Many of the same philosophical conversations that took place over the past 24 months in the US are only just now starting in these regions. Still a long way to go, but certainly headed in the right direction.

Ad pollution

My biggest concern, about native and it’s the same concern publishers and brand marketers should have around it, is that the entire category becomes polluted with ad providers moving banner experiences from the right rail into the editorial stream. In-feed click-out experiences that behave like banners without regard for user experience are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. With even a small amount of runway, these faux players stand to hijack the native category, unwind consumer trust and loyalty, and drive a host of negative sentiment for all involved. The fastest way for native to sink before it sails is if publishers and marketers race to the bottom with in-feed click-out executions versus climb to the top and create a sustainable and healthy ecosystem with fully integrated “true native” experiences around high quality brand content that provides meaningful value to consumers.

TV and digital video

2015 should see an acceleration of the shift of brand advertising dollars from TV to digital video. 2014 saw a good deal of early adoption, but 2015 will be much more meaningful. Though native will certainly continue to grow quickly and will continue to be an important trend in media, the biggest trend in 2015 will be digital video. The acceleration of native will begin in 2016 as brands and agencies reorganize their marketing efforts so that brand content is the primary and central strategy to both their creative and media buying teams.

For much more analysis of the biggest trends shaping global media and marketing, order your FREE copy of M&M Global presents: International Media 2015 here