In addition to SEM promotion, why do we need to invest in native advertising?

The key differences between native advertising and search advertising are:

Different “periods of influence”

Different “assessment modes”

As a native advertising professional, I often receive this kind of soul-searching question from clients who are new to feed advertising:

“Search is doing well, why should I invest in native?”

The general answer is: "Search ads are people looking for information, while native ads are information looking for people. Search ads are more like ads, while native ads are more like content. Native ads have a wide variety of products, blah blah..."

58.com’s native ads and search ads in Baidu App

Many customers’ response is: “So what?”

Indeed, so what? As a performance-based advertisement, the first thing that comes to the customer’s mind is definitely: “ Can I get more leads at a lower cost? ”

So, is it necessarily more efficient for information to find people than for people to find information? Is content necessarily more conducive to conversion than advertising? Are native ads necessarily better than search ads?

The answer is no.

If our thinking is limited to "who is more accurate", "who is more friendly" and "who is more effective", we will only fall into an endless self-proving vicious circle.

Search ads VS native ads, let’s interpret it from a different angle.

1. Influential period

Before smartphones became popular, people mostly accessed the Internet through PCs. Since PCs are "scenario-based", people will not be able to continue searching for information on the Internet when they leave these PC scenarios.

From this we can see that at that time, the impact of Internet advertising on netizens was limited to the time when " people were sitting in front of the computer ."

Today, smartphones have become a part of the human body, allowing people to access the Internet anytime and anywhere. In addition to searching for information of interest (during the period of influence of search ads), you can also read news and watch videos on your mobile phone (during the period of influence of native ads).

"Search when you have something to do, take a look when you have nothing to do" is a true reflection of the lives of today's netizens.

There is no doubt that these two time periods do not overlap, and it is impossible for a person to search for information and browse news on a mobile phone at the same time. As an advertiser, both time periods should be taken into consideration, otherwise the sustained impact of the advertisement will be greatly reduced.

Imagine two products, A and B. Consumers have the same initial perception of them. Product A is launched during both the search period and the content period (10 hours), while product B is only launched during the search period (4 hours). Which one will occupy consumers' minds faster?

2. Evaluation Model

Evaluation model refers to the method by which consumers evaluate the value of a product . We divide the evaluation mode into two types:

1. Solo evaluation: Consumers evaluate the current product only.
2. Joint evaluation: Consumers evaluate multiple products simultaneously.

It is clear that search advertising often brings consumers into a "joint evaluation" mode.

For example, when users search for "travel", advertisements for travel products such as "Ctrip", "Qunar", "Tuniu" and "Mafengwo" will appear at the same time. When multiple products appear, users automatically enter joint evaluation mode.

In this case, users will compare prices from many stores just like they would in a vegetable market, and only decide which product to buy after collecting enough information.

This is where search advertising has its advantages: users’ purchase intent is very clear;

But the weakness also lies here : users have collected enough horizontal information through joint evaluation. How can you be sure that users with multiple alternatives will definitely choose you? Is your product really that much better than the competition?

Native advertising, on the other hand, is mostly conducted under “individual evaluation”.

Because native ads are interspersed in the information flow and do not appear only when users search for them. In this case, the only product presented to the user is yours.

If the user happens to have potential needs in this regard (it should be said that there must be such needs, because the targeting principle of native advertising determines that it will not appear in front of irrelevant users), and the "facade" is also attractive, then there is a high probability that the user will click in and browse around.

The Huolala App native ads in Toutiao and the eLong Travel native ads in Zhihu

At this point, the user is like entering a specialty store, listening to the shopping guide's introduction, looking at the product display, and placing an order if he thinks it is suitable.

Even in native advertising, most users do not have to make the important decision of "paying", they just need to leave their contact information, which makes them feel less pressured.

There is no interference from competitor information. As long as your sales strategy makes the user comfortable, you can get his business card. This is the biggest advantage of native advertising.

Some advertisers who are fond of search ads may say: It doesn’t matter whether you compare prices from many stores or not, it’s up to you to buy it or not. If he doesn’t buy it, there are plenty of people who will!

I want to say, it’s 2019 now, don’t you have any idea of ​​the economic situation? The era of traffic has passed. We should try our best to win over every customer who sees our advertisement. This is what we should have in the next few years.

Finally, let’s summarize:

Search ads and native ads are brothers with their own missions. If you want good advertising results, you must not favor one over the other.

Unless you have cosmic confidence and can capture the hearts of users with fewer influential time periods and N levels higher quality than your competitors, don’t ask questions like “Why should I invest in native advertising?”

Source: Interesting Mou Hui