As a way to break the irruptive pattern of outbound marketing, native advertising has achieved strong prominence. It is a way of promoting content in paid media, taking into consideration the visual aesthetics of the space where it is being advertised, that is, it is content that adapts both in form and functionality to the environment in which it appears, allowing it to impact to the user in a less intrusive way than with traditional advertising.
An essential element of this type of advertising is that it is not precisely perceived as one, because it is 100% integrated into the place where it is positioned. For example, when it is located in an online medium (web page, social network, blog), we will see that it is content that fully respects the format and editorial style. However, despite this for ethical reasons, we must explicitly show that this is promoted content.
Despite this, for native advertising to be successful it must be quality content that generates some value in its readers. Although it has a promotional message, in addition to highlighting the “native source” of that content, it should not be excessively advertising, since it should not break with the philosophy of inbound marketing, which is to be contextual and non-invasive.
Based on this strong role, today we can find many pages that function as intermediaries to offer this native advertising service through CPC (cost per click) methodologies, campaign monitoring and statistics on their growth. Here are the main native advertising platforms that you can use to boost your content marketing strategies:
1. Outbrain
Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav started Outbrain with the mission of helping people discover content they can trust by being interesting, relevant and timely to them. Therefore, it connected perfectly with the objectives of inbound marketing and since 2006 Outbrain built its brand by providing companies the opportunity to promote themselves on the best information pages through recommendation widgets.
Its platform allows content strategists to promote articles, videos, infographics, slideshows and other media that provide entertainment or informational value. Outbrain‘s publication sources have a wide reach worldwide, these are pages such as CNN, Slate or ESPN. Its website highlights that 80% of companies worldwide (Outbrain offers its services in 55 countries) use its platform to carry out native advertising.
2. Taboola
Launched on the market in 2007 by Adam Singolda, Taboola is one of the most used platforms to carry out native advertising. Provides the widgets content creators need to advertise published web articles, images, and videos. Today, Taboola ‘s predictive engine ranks content on major publishing sites such as Business Insider, Yahoo!, and NBC.
This platform, through its panel, allows you to obtain real-time information and data about the performance of your content. Its business model includes the cost-per-click modality with the additional option to pay a little more per click to access the platform’s main publishers, such as: Forbes, Real Simple and People.
3. TripleLift
Founded in 2012 by Eric Berry, TripleLift is a company that specializes in enabling and optimizing native advertising scheduling tools. Its main function is to analyze advertising assets and use computer vision data to transform images and videos into native ads that fit the visual aesthetics of the website where you want to promote the content. Some of TripleLift’s advertisers include Toyota, Humira and Charles Schwab, and some of its publishing partners include Conde Nast, The New York Times and MSN.
4. Sharethrough
Born in Silicon Valley in 2008 and led today by its CEO Dan Greenberg and Rob Fan, this native advertising platform has large clients from all over the world and a staff of more than 170 people. However, they have offices in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Austin, London and Canada. One of the characteristics that differentiates it from the market is that clients can follow the impact of the campaign at any time and in real-time.
5. Geozo
Geozo is an international native advertising platform, known for combining competitive pricing with high-quality traffic. The company started as a market leader in Indonesia and has established a strong presence in Europe and Latin America. As Geozo expands globally, advertisers receive access to new geographic locations virtually every month.
Geozo collaborates with companies of various sizes, from large corporations to individual affiliates, making native advertising accessible to everyone. This accessibility is also facilitated by the platform’s interface, which is easy to use and allows buying traffic even for partners with little experience in media buying. Additionally, support experts are always ready to help partners at every stage of their advertising journey. Thanks to Geozo, advertisers can buy high-quality traffic from trusted publishers under the CPC model. Geozo native advertising integrates seamlessly into the design and content of websites, creating an engaging experience for the audience and, as a result, increasing CTR and conversions.
Advanced targeting, detailed statistics and optimization tools allow advertisers to reach the most relevant audience and achieve effective results. Geozo offers the option of blacklisting and whitelisting for maximum ad reach. Because Geozo is relatively new to the market, the platform can boast of constant emergence of new traffic. Therefore, it is definitely worth trying this platform at the first opportunity.
6. Ligatus
Ligatus is a pioneering native advertising company that was born in 2005, which today has offices in France, Austria, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Turkey, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Therefore, they have more than 14 years of experience in native advertising, performance marketing and content recommendation. Its CEO is Klaus Ludemann and currently works with clients such as Microsoft, Disney, Spotify, P&G, and BMW, among others.
Among its objectives is to facilitate a positive user experience with non-intrusive digital advertising that merges with the publisher’s design.
In short, native advertising is an excellent option for those companies that want to promote their content within large media outlets. Knowing which platforms are most used to carry it out is the first step to start with this strategy in style, among which stand out: Taboola, Outbrain, Triplefit, Sharethrough and Ligatus.
