Native Advertising In 2019: This Will Happen

We will hopefully move away from expensive CPC deals during 2019. Good native advertising must at least be measured on what kind of relevant content it attracts, and, more importantly, on client KPIs. In 2019 there will be no such thing as a “great piece” if it’s not delivering on the agreed upon KPIs. Whether it’s sales, B2B leads or just engaging and relevant traffic is of course up to the client.

For years we’ve been talking about this and we can now see a trend where more clients are becoming aware. And it’s really important that all of the industry follow lead before native advertising becomes irrelevant. Not only does the campaigns suffer from irrelevant KPIs and expensive CPC deals – it’s also a matter of long term trust and transparency.

For example we’ve always argued that the content should be placed on an external site – and not within the publisher CMS. Not only does this allow the client and agency to work more efficiently and in control, it’s also the trustworthy choice.

Within this industry it might seem very clear what native advertising is, but according to a study by Uppsala University, only 1 out of 10 Swedes were able to identify that it indeed was a native advertising article and not an editorial piece. That’s not the way to go in 2019. So obviously we need to make a change for the sake of our clients – but also think about the actual readers.

There is probably another thing that will explode in 2019: video and in ad content (IAC). By delivering great content directly in the feed, we will be able to interact with good storytelling directly on ad level. The video boom on Facebook will surely move to other channels in the coming year. For non-video campaigns, IAC will be key to engage with the scrollers out there – let’s catch them.