Mike Harty in ExchangeWire, March 2015: The Highlights

Last month, our Co-Founder Mike Harty talked to Ronan Shields at ExchangeWire about the growth of native, adding value to the user experience and the benefits of standardization.

Here’s a digest of the best bits…

On native growth:

“…what is abundantly clear is that both advertisers and publishers are heavily adopting Native. According to the IAB, spend hit £216m in the first half of 2014. Furthermore according to AOP figures, publishers have now identified Native as their principal new business opportunity. Combined, this shows the rapidly growing appetite and opportunity in Native from both buyers and sellers.”

“Native advertising is an opportunity to rewrite the playbook… It’s a chance to say: ‘If we want digital advertising to work optimally, we need to figure out ways to add value to the user experience.’”

On transparency and the user experience:

“Native should deliver end-user value, not detract from it… Programmatic Native will benefit from the scale enabled by standardization. However, what I would point out, is that we need to be mindful of not over-regulating the format, otherwise we stand to lose the value of the nature of the placement. We simply cannot end up with a scenario where all native ad formats look the same.”

“The online advertising industry is encountering the rapid rise of ad blocking software, and I believe that native, executed optimally, can help combat this issue. When using the right audience and contextual data to serve a reader with relevant sponsored content… you’re infinitely less likely to incur the wrath of the ad blockers. Ultimately, why would you want to block content – paid or otherwise – which genuinely adds value to what you’re reading?”

On scaling native:

“…the challenge becomes delivering the value proposition of native at huge scale, whilst maintaining the inherent value of super-customized placements and executions, whilst also implementing an element of standardization.”

“Programmatic Native ads need to be able to adapt to the audience and the context of what the audience is reading, and they’re now able to do so by leveraging the advanced technology designed around the display advertising space.”

 

Defining the Programmatic Native Rulebook & Avoiding the Pitfalls of Over-Regulation. Written by Ronan Shields on 18th March 2015.

Read the full article here, on ExchangeWire.