Going Native is Good

March 29, 2007

No, I’m not talking about the benefits of walking around in your birthday suit. I’m referring to a new article published over at Marketing Experiments that does an analysis of ad performance on the web. Not quite as exciting? Sorry.

The analysis does some measurement of online ads and sees which converts better. In short, the findings were that ads which look like they are part of the site they are on perform better. As they put it, “In these cases, contextual ads and offer links that appeared “native” to the page performed significantly better that those that stood out from the site’s own native content.”

People are becoming increasing ad-allergic online, and they just become accustomed to blocking out advertising. If they don’t do it in actuality, they do it mentally. In order for your ad to be noticed, you need to respect the user and make the ad fit into their online experience. Some might view this as tricking the user into thinking it is actual content. There are, no doubt, those who will try that. However, if the ad is indeed relevant to the content and also looks like it belongs, then I would argue that it is not tricking the user at all. It is giving the user an option to solve some issue that they are obviously interested in because they are reading it.

Something to keep in mind, because I know the instinct is to go big, bright and bold in order to get the audience’s attention via the hammer effect. I’ve been guilt of it as well. But, perhaps its not as workable as we might have thought.