Page 8 - AeM_Oct_2017_final

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

The status quo

of programmatic

native

If mobile app developers in the early days focused ber of publishers and advertisers by making advertising
mostly on winning new users to succeed internationally, more cost-effective and transparent in the mobile sec-
rethinking kicked in by now, since intrusive mobile ad- tor. Consequently, the next logical step is to offer and
vertising is unacceptable nowadays! This paved the purchase native ads bookings programmatically, too -
way for native ads, which possess the characteristics of although mobile native ads still face two fundamental
being effective and at the same time less intrusive to challenges:
users.
So far, there are no uniform standard formats: The
Impressive figures, such as from Facebook with en- confusing number of mobile advertising competitors, as
gagement rate improvements of up to 60 percent and well as the various platforms, systems and advertisers,
an increase in retention rates by three, suddenly made make it difficult to set uniform standards for various rea-
interest in native ads soar. sons. "Native" is a very broad term with different defini-
tions – since most publishers have their own versions
In fact, the limited screen space, usually a disad- of native ads formats and therefore different views
vantage of mobile devices, helped to enforce native about how and if standard formats should be available.
advertising in the mobile sector: with so little room to
place banners, ads must integrate perfectly into the Facebook and Google are hard to beat, with their
predefined format that was previously occupied by edi- enormous reach and advanced targeting opportunities.
torial content. Hence the bulk of advertising budgets goes directly
there. The dominance of Facebook makes it difficult for
Native ads show higher commitment rates in mobile competitors to push into this market, as well as to cre-
than desktop-based applications, however, despite its ate any kind of standards since the market is biased.
increasing popularity, the rapid growth of the
“programmatic mobile native ads” is still due, same as In summary, this mean that, while the standardization
with other mobile ad formats, such as video or intersti- of mobile native advertising is only a matter of time,
tial ads. Which poses the question why that is so and publishers still need to learn to market their audience
when programmatic can be expected on a larger scale. outside of Facebook and Google. And although the In-
teractive Advertising Bureau (IAB) already published a
Anyway, even if native ads are very effective, there is a "Native Advertising Playbook", it is unlikely that the
catch: They must be placed in a conventional, non- market will experience significant changes that are
programmatic way. To make a native ad truly "native", broad enough to introduce general standards for native
the ad should adapt to the format of the respective me- ads. Most likely, the native ad formats introduced by
dium - and, of course, each platform presents its con- Facebook and Google will become the quasi-standard
tent in a different way. As a result, native advertising is for native in-app ads, because of the dominance of the
a very time-consuming process that must be set up for two in the market regarding app monetarization (on the
every platform anew. At the same time, this has also offer side) and advertising spending (on the demand
led to the fact that channels with a particularly large side). This leads to smaller vendors copying over and
range and strong targeting possibilities, such as Face- over again the format - which is already happening -
book and Twitter, already have occupied a huge part of both at the ad platform level and the app developer
the market. The constraint confined the growth of the side. As soon as these standards are established, and
native advertising industry enormously. For other for- publishers understand their audience, nothing is hold-
mats, such as banners and interstitials, the program- ing them back to embrace “mobile native programmat-
matic media trade opened the market for a larger num- ic”. ◊ By MediaBUZZ
8 October 2017 - Programmatic & Native Advertising