5 dimensions to create true “native advertising”

People watch what they want to see, and sometimes, that's an ad.
—Howard Luk Gossage, advertising pioneer, 1969

Why do we need native advertising ?

No one wants to watch ads. The survey shows that 99.8% of banner ads are ignored, and the chances of pre-roll ads being skipped are greatly increased. For advertisers who value user experience , native advertising is the only viable form of advertising.

What people really want is not a product, but a satisfying experience (Abbott, 1955). This experience begins when users are exposed to advertisements. Native marketing emphasizes people-centeredness and creates native content that is closely connected to consumers’ lives and the media environment. This helps advertisements integrate into the media environment and minimizes intrusion. Therefore, native advertising can bring users a better brand experience, which is the meaning and value of native advertising.

The core of native advertising is to ensure user brand experience while delivering brand value. A brand’s user experience generally includes five dimensions: sensory experience, emotional experience, thinking experience, action experience, and associative experience. However, most of the existing native advertisements have only achieved the most basic native content style and form (i.e., sensory experience native), which is still a long way from true native advertisements.

Five dimensions of native advertising

1. Native sensory experience (content style is consistent with the media environment)

Integrating into the media environment and maintaining consistent content style are the basic requirements for native advertising. Good style consistency can make users pay attention to the brand unconsciously, rather than recognizing it at a glance and generating avoidance behavior.

Sensory experiences include vision, taste, smell, hearing, and touch. Under existing technologies, native advertising on new media channels generally only includes visual and auditory experiences.

For example, in information flow products such as Weibo and Toutiao, native advertisements are published in the same graphic and text format as ordinary information. Except for the word "advertisement" in the notes, there is basically no difference in format from ordinary information.

The native ads of Baidu Images are highly consistent with other images searched out. Except for a small line of text notes below the image, there is no discernible difference.

The ICON advertisement in the Beauty Camera APP is consistent with other function buttons in the APP in terms of color tone and style design, and does not form a visual conflict.

The native ads in WeChat Moments are published in the form of "text + picture" friend status, which is highly consistent with the real friend status in form and does not feel out of place.

Nowadays, many TV drama commercials use actors from the drama and adopt the style and scenes from the drama for shooting. The same principle applies.

2. Emotional experience is native (content emotion/emotion is consistent with user expectations)

Users have different emotional needs and emotional experiences when using different media channels. Therefore, when making native advertisements, we should fully consider the consistency of users’ emotions and emotional experiences to avoid users from feeling disgusted.

For example, when users watch variety shows, they do so for entertainment and leisure, so the native ads in the shows cannot be too boring, as boring ads will conflict with the interesting atmosphere of the shows.

" The Debaters " can be regarded as a model of emotional experience native advertising. Whether it is the host and guests cleverly telling advertisements, debaters telling jokes, or advertising embedded in sitcoms, they are all cleverly integrated with the entertainment atmosphere of the program. Not only do they not disgust users, but they increase the laughs of the program and give users surprises again and again.

For another example, many users follow TV dramas out of the need to chase stars, so the current use of leading actors as spokespersons in many TV dramas’ embedded advertisements is a very good way to avoid user disgust.

The Meco milk tea advertisement that was released before the TV series "Legend of the Ancient Sword" was broadcast chose the star of the drama, William Chan, as the spokesperson, which well met the users' emotional needs for chasing stars and naturally significantly reduced their aversion to the advertisement.

In addition, the main purpose of users browsing Moments is to see their friends’ updates and hot topics and information that interest them. Therefore, the native ads in WeChat Moments should be written from a friend’s perspective so as not to affect the user’s emotional experience.

The way to judge whether an advertisement fits the atmosphere of the circle of friends is very simple. You just need to think about it from another perspective: what would you say when you post to your circle of friends using your private WeChat account?

Imagine, when you want to recommend a movie to a friend, would you write like the one in the picture above? Of course not, it’s so official, it’s obviously an advertisement. In the picture below, using the celebrity’s WeChat to post an advertisement similar to a personal status is obviously more in line with the user’s emotional expectations when browsing their Moments.

In addition, as a friend, the brand can share interesting, useful and reasonable content, which is very consistent with the atmosphere of the circle of friends and is more likely to attract users' attention and forwarding.

3. Think natively (content inspiration is consistent with the media environment)

The first two experiences are sensory, while thinking experience is rational.

For vertical and in-depth media, the user's thinking experience is crucial. When brands choose such platforms to embed native advertising, they should be careful to keep the thoughts triggered by the advertising content consistent with the media environment.

For example, Zhihu, a portal for sharing in-depth content, has a large number of highly educated users, and most of these users have excellent long-text reading skills and deep thinking habits.

Therefore, Zhihu's native advertisements mostly take the form of answering questions and sharing the brand's core values. For example, the electronic reading device Kindle created a native advertisement in the form of a long article with the topic "What does reading bring us?" The article did not discuss the product attributes, but instead chatted with readers in a literary way about the fun and value of reading itself, prompting readers to think about the essence of reading.

For another example, Phoenix.com, which focuses on in-depth information, launched a series of special reports for its cooperative brand Airuihui, combining them with hot social events and pushing them in the form of news reports, which prompted readers to think about the entire Chinese dairy industry, which is very consistent with Phoenix.com's thinking experience.

4. Native action experience (participation method is consistent with the media environment)

People’s active participation will lead to deeper feelings, and in the new media environment, participants have a wide range of interactive options. Therefore, most advertisements will incorporate interactive experiences to achieve better communication effects.

For native advertising, keeping the engagement method consistent with the media environment, rather than simply jumping to the page, is an important part of maintaining user experience.

For example, Zhihu’s brand question-type native ads are designed to allow users to follow questions, write answers, and write comments, which are exactly the same as the participation methods for other ordinary questions, ensuring that the user’s action experience is native.

WeChat’s Moments native ads are designed with participation links such as likes, comments, forwarding, and following, and also take the user’s action experience into consideration, allowing users to participate in the brand’s native ads just like they participate in their friends’ status.

In contrast, most of Toutiao ’s native ads do not perform well in terms of mobile experience. The normal interactive behavior of users using Toutiao accounts is to click on the title image to enter the text, and then they can like, comment, follow and other interactions. However, most of the advertisements on Toutiao accounts will jump directly to the brand APP or official website interface, which is no different from ordinary patch ads and has a great impact on the user's action experience.

5. Connect with consumers in a native way

The ultimate goal of brand experience is to establish a relationship between the brand and consumers, but most brands ignore this when creating native advertising. This kind of connection is easier to achieve in social media , but more difficult to achieve in other media.

For example, even if a QR code is placed on a native advertisement in the middle of a video, it is difficult for people to immediately take out their phones to scan it, because this way of associating with the brand is not a native associative experience on the video website.

Connect with us by following the official account on WeChat:

Establish connections in Zhihu by following Zhihu accounts:

Or establishing connections on Weibo by following a Weibo account are all ways for native advertising to create a native, related experience.

summary

Native marketing emphasizes people-centeredness and creates native content that is closely connected to consumers' lives and the media environment. This helps integrate advertising into the media environment and minimizes intrusion.

This requires brand native marketing to consider the five dimensions of sensory experience native, emotional experience native, thinking experience native, action experience native, and associative experience native at the same time.