Programmatic native advertising is on the rise
It is a method of incorporating marketing assets and messages into a publisher’s feed. Native ads that are purchased and placed programmatically allow brands to capitalise on increased relevance and personalisation.
Machine learning and contextual signals enable programmatic native ads to be tailored to the user, improving advertiser performance.
According to a report of Forbes (https://rb.gy/p3fs51), 1,900 advertisers spent $2.6 billion in the space between January and May 2021. Compared to 2020, when 926 advertisers spent $1.9 billion on native advertising, it is clear that advertisers want native advertising to be automated to maximise scale and efficiency. However, the rise of programmatic trading poses a risk to brand safety, with some environments risking negative associations between buyers and sellers.
In one recent case, the Washington Post and New York Magazine inadvertently featured porn from an adult network whose video platform Vidme, the publishers were embedding other video content from. Brand safety is always a concern in digital advertising, but it is especially important for Native ads.
When advertisements are seamlessly integrated into their environments, it creates even stronger connections between brands, publishers, and the content on the page.
Quality, relevance, and suitability are critical for maintaining and improving a close customer relationship.
To protect their reputations and identify optimal native placements, brands should consider the following steps.
Choose your partners wisely.
Choose ad networks prioritising media security for programmatic and non-automated native ads, and keep a close eye on quality. These reputable ad networks are the foundation for private marketplaces (PMPs), where brands can find a dependable portfolio of premium publishers. PMPs create a direct, transparent link between the buy and sell sides, making advertisers confident that available media has been vetted and meets their messaging and values. Brand protection necessitates careful selection of trading partners and native placements, but how can buyers ensure they are not limiting their options?
Advertisers typically use methods such as blacklists, whitelists, and keyword blocking to give them granular control over the type of content that surrounds their ads. These have risks despite their high value, especially when combined with other verification methods. Advertisers must be prepared to act proactively to avoid missing out on unexpected opportunities. For example, the rise in misinformation in 2020 prompted many brands to tread carefully when advertising around Covid-19 content. Because the pandemic was high on the news agenda, brands reduced the size of their campaigns when not all content was safe. In fact, authoritative, optimistic, and educational content helped some brands establish positive associations.
To capitalise on these opportunities, brands should use brand safety tools to identify native placements that are safe and highly appropriate. Advanced contextual technologies capable of natural language processing (NLP) and semantic analysis are powered by artificial intelligence skills. This technique uses grammatical structure to extract meaning from sentences and words, allowing one to categorise context and measure overall sentiment. As a result of contextual targeting, environments and advertising content complement each other, enhancing brand messaging and engaging receptive audiences. Based on the suitability of native placements for their brands, brands can make more informed decisions.
Make sure you ask the right questions.
Before planning how to mitigate risk, brands should speak with an agency or partner and ask three essential questions:
What kind of protection does your solution provide for my brand?
One-size-fits-all solutions must account for brand differences in values, objectives, and target audiences. As a result, brands should seek partners whose brand safety tools enable them to customise brand safety criteria. They can then choose the media most relevant to their products or industries.
Can you demonstrate that the technology works?
Proven success is critical when selecting the right partners and brand safety tools to mitigate risk. Partners should show, for example, how advanced brand safety tools like semantic analysis and natural language processing lead to higher engagement rates.
The NLP market is anticipated to grow from approximately 3 billion US dollars in 2017 to over 43 billion dollars in 2025, a nearly 14-fold increase from its 2017 size. (https://www.appypie.com/blog/natural-language-processing) As a result, you should ask the partners utilising these technologies for results.
How will your technology affect my reach?
The security of a brand is nuanced, and the technologies used to protect it must reflect this. Brands can use all opportunities to enhance their reputation through relevant and appropriate native placements if they understand linguistic complexities and read content like the human brain. Reaching out to target audiences in a safe environment should be unlimited. Brands must ensure their digital advertising complements surrounding content and meet audience expectations. The success of native placements is determined by how advertisements are integrated into the user experience.
Conclusion
Although an automated approach can improve efficiency, brands require a tailored strategy to determine brand suitability and connect with ad-weary audiences. To be effective with native advertising, brands must collaborate with trusted ad networks, discuss brand safety criteria with their partners, and implement technologies that identify brand-safe placements. They will improve their reputation by delivering relevant and engaging messages in a safe and optimal environment. Brands can increase their relevance, revenue, and target audience by implementing mFilterIt’s Brand Hygiene Protection. This solution assists in keeping advertisements away from dangerous environments, fraudulent affiliates, and untrustworthy publishers.