Native Advertising in Ecommerce: Strategies to Stand Out in Digital Media

Ecommerce needs to integrate its campaigns into digital media, seeking alternatives that complete its strategy and ensure effectiveness in an increasingly saturated market.

Native advertising emerges as a great option and, perhaps, you haven’t used it yet. We will explain what it is, its advantages, and the main formats. Its possibilities will surprise you!

 

What is Native Advertising?

Obviously, this is the first question we need to answer. It involves creating advertising campaigns that integrate into a platform or channel as if they were just another piece of content, allowing advertising collaborations to coexist with organic ones (those that are not paid).

Although we will delve into details, a small example always helps to reinforce the concept.

Imagine your ecommerce specializes in gardening and plant products. You contract an article in an online newspaper’s nature section titled: “These Are the 5 Non-Toxic Plants for Cats You Can Have.”

Most of the news and articles in that medium are information within its editorial line and primarily aim to inform, not sell. They provide intrinsic value to the reader, making them consume it voluntarily and proactively because they are part of an audience interested in certain topics.

 

Advantages of Native Advertising for Ecommerce

Once you better understand what it entails, you’re probably already drawing your own conclusions about what native advertising can bring to ecommerce.

We believe there are several aspects where it is particularly recommended, even over other fully established formats.

 

Visibility

Users are overwhelmed with stimuli, reducing the effectiveness of banners and display ads. We can practically say that users are developing a certain blindness to them, and unless a product particularly interests them, they will ignore it.

One of the keys is precisely the interest. This makes the mechanism pull rather than push, meaning the user proactively “pulls” our content in an area of interest, receiving it not as an interference, which could be perceived as an annoying intrusion.

According to an Adobe study comparing generated attention, this format is by far the one that captures the most seconds from users:

• Standard display ads: 0.7 seconds.
• Facebook mobile ads: 1.7 seconds.
• Click-to-play (CTP) video ads: 3.1 seconds.
• Scroll-to-play (STP) video ads: 13.1 seconds.
• Native ads: 57.4 seconds

 

Authority

Native advertising has a mimicry effect since, being fully integrated into a medium or platform, it aligns with the editorial line and values of the medium.

Therefore, in the case of an article published in an online newspaper, our products and store receive the indirect endorsement of the same newspaper.

The same happens with endorsers and influencers. Even if it’s explicitly stated that they are paid collaborations, there’s an underlying understanding of a sincere recommendation.

 

Branding

We understand that this might not be the strategy with the most direct impact on conversion (precisely because it’s not its primary goal). Nonetheless, it’s important to understand that indirectly, native advertising has a strong impact on the brand.

Embedding mentions within relevant content for our audience generates a notoriety that directly reflects in the brand’s immediate recall and positioning.

 

Native Advertising Channels

In reality, any platform serving content is potentially a channel for native advertising. To name a few of the main ones:

• Online Media: Any news page, from the most general to the most specific, is potentially perfect for incorporating content created by brands.
• Blogs: Despite being declared dead for the past 20 years, they have proven to remain relevant to many targets, consuming highly segmented content.
• Social Media: In a way, they are the logical evolution of blogs and are crucial because influencers and endorsers generally share their content there.
• Search Engines: What is SEM if not native advertising? In fact, it’s one of the clearest examples of integration. Search ads appear similar to organic results (except for the tag identifying sponsored results).

And we could add many more alternatives to this, such as certain types of newsletters, mobile app content, streaming, podcasts…

 

Native Advertising Formats

To help you define your marketing strategy in this channel, here are some of the main formats you can use for native advertising in ecommerce.

 

Search Engine Ads

The classic SEM or PPC places our ads right above the organic content. Over time, it has become more sophisticated, including new formats besides search, but the essence remains.

As with other formats we will discuss, it’s important to note that many users consume the advertising without being fully aware they are accessing the ecommerce through an ad.

 

Sponsored Links

This involves placing links within a browsing context that lead to our product. Where? Anywhere that allows it, with the collaboration of the medium or owner.

For instance, notice how influencers on social networks often talk about a product linked in their profiles.

This also includes in-feed advertising, links appearing within users’ timelines on platforms like Meta or X, as if they were native posts from other users.

 

Branded Content

This is another widely used format. It consists of an article or video content published within a medium’s editorial line. The key is to provide some value to the reader, making them possibly not even realize it’s an ad campaign.

That said, branded content is always labeled as sponsored or advertising content.

 

Related Articles

Anyone who reads online media has been tempted to click on a related article to the one they are reading. In the case of native advertising, the goal is to create attractive content capable of generating clicks that somehow drive traffic, sales, and brand authority.

 

Don’t you think native advertising in ecommerce have many possibilities for your online store?