3 Questions about Native Advertising (with Jonathan Kim)

There's no stopping the growth of native advertising: According to AdYouLike, global native spend is expected to increase by 372% from 2020 to 2025.

To learn more about the opportunities available to marketers, I reached out to native advertising expert Jonathan Kim of TripleLift. Read on for his insights into the space:  

Ryan Manchee: What do advertisers get wrong about native advertising?

Jonathan Kim: Advertisers often bucket all native formats into a single category, but not all native is equal. The IAB’s Native 1.2 Spec was introduced in 2017 to provide guardrails and clarity around the identification of native ad types.

From in-feed and in-article, to peripheral and recommendation widget placements, these ad types vary dramatically by aesthetic, user experience, pricing, and performance—especially compared to a standard display or video placement.

RM: How has COVID-19 impacted native advertising?

JK: Brands have re-positioned their goals in a post-COVID world. Brand safety is of imperative importance, and companies will make sure their messages are running on brand-safe inventory and associated with news sources that provide relevant & trustworthy information.

Beyond inventory prioritization, companies have learned the importance of online presence as COVID accelerated all things digital.

RM: How will iOS14 and the loss of third-party cookies impact native advertising practices?

JK: The native ecosystem is prepared to move forward with minimal to no changes to the products. Native advertising is prepared to adopt all of the potential solutions ready to replace the third-party cookie (identity solutions, Google's Privacy Sandbox, packaged inventory deals, utilizing publishers' 1st party data, etc.), and will have a significant advantage in contextual solutions without compromising the formats that make native unique.

Learn more from Jonathan Kim in Native Advertising: Rising Above the Banner Noise.