By Michael Goldberg
Everyone’s talking native. But when it comes to executing, agencies are typically the decision makers when it comes to selecting the advertising strategies they will employ for their clients. As it turns out, they’ll be leveraging native advertising more frequently according to a new survey of over 100 digital media buyers across the US.
TripleLift teamed up with DMR to survey executives representing some of the industry’s biggest media buying agencies including Starcom MediaVest, MEC, Carat, Mediacom, UM, Spark, Mindshare, among others. While individual responses on what constitutes native varied, the overarching and defining theme is that native advertising is any form of sponsored content that can be easily integrated within the look and feel of the site it lives on.
73% of digital media buyers surveyed currently employ a native advertising strategy. 67% plan to increase the use of native in 2014 and beyond, while 26% expect their use to remain the same. Only 7% of respondents look to scale back the use of native in the future.
Not surprisingly, the general consensus is that native advertising is effective. 68% of digital media buyers find native advertising to be valuable or extremely valuable forms of advertising.
However, this does not come without its challenges. There is still confusion over where to find creative, how to measure results, and how to achieve scale. The following infograph provides a high-level summary of the results.
