Why native advertising has become the main trend of the media and how to implement it on Russian sites

Content marketing is gradually creeping into the minds of Russian brands. The most common way of placing native advertising is that the editor in collaboration with the brand creates content and publishes it on its site. The cost of such placement in the Russian edition with traffic of 1-2 million per day comes to a couple hundred thousand rubles for one text. (Not resource-intensive formats such as tests, games, etc., but just text.)

World statistics for the development of native advertising looks more than impressive.
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In 2015, the United States will spend $ 7.9 billion on native advertising (in 2013, it was 4.7). By 2018, the amount will increase to 21 billion. According to Media Radar, the purchase of native advertising in the States increased by 122% in the last six months.

Against the background of the decline of banners with their CTR of 0.2%, native advertising returns brands to the top of zero, where the grass was greener, and clickability was measured in numbers not within the framework of statistical errors.

What is the problem with native advertising in Russia?

In Russia, examples of good branded content as text or interactive periodically pop up. Western metrics for sponsorship content from Russian distinguishes, mainly, one thing - they are. They know about branded content, it is considered . There are strong arguments in the form of publications in the Huffington Post, Mashable, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, The Verge, etc. We also can count the statistics, but not so interesting. Because a little. We think this happens for 2 reasons:

First, the production of branded content for media is associated with the concept of “jeans”. It is believed that when the editors write an advertising article - this is unethical, mean and unprofessional. That says not about the nobility of journalists (each of whom wants to write a novel; and, of course, it will be about love, and not about multicookers), but about the lack of methods and skills to work with advertising content within editorial boards.

Secondly, the projects are 9 rounds of approval. Who will write the text: the journalists on the side of the publisher or the PR people on the side of the brand. And what will it be on the content: just a story about the product, an interview, a mini-game or ... anything. How to make the material correspond to the editorial format. Is there a “Sponsor” or “Advertising” mark? - because it can scare the user .

This is a laborious process, and production becomes more expensive. As a result, only the largest and strongest can pay for accommodation.

What do the media think that come to “big and strong”

In a case with McDonald's, Medusa says that in the future placement of sponsorship content on the site can cover up to 60% of editorial expenses .

The CEO of the Sports.ru portal Dmitry Navosh also gives excellent recommendations to the native format :

“I am absolutely convinced that native advertising has a great future. And the present, in fact, is also nothing - the success of native advertising in social networks demonstrates this well. I think that in other types of media, native advertising can work just as well or even better than media formats. More precisely, they are needed for different things: banners, branding and video - for visual communication. Native advertising, where text means no less or more pictures, for more pragmatic and meaningful communication. In the case when advertisers need the second, we actively advise native advertising on Sports.ru - and the return for them turns out to be 2-4 times more than standard banners. Of the minuses of the format is the fact that it works really well only if you take into account when placing a particular audience of the site. That is, by the same, conditionally, Visa or Beeline, it makes sense to come to Sports.ru, Kinopoisk, or there Medusa with different content. Accordingly, the question arises of the scalability of the campaign: a couple of visuals for banners will not get off. But the effort is worth it. ”

The result is a commercially working format in the embryo stage with the following qualities:

• The material is released on par with editorial content, which increases user confidence and CTR.
• The advertiser gets access to the site’s quality traffic.

What's wrong?

• the advertising company turns out to be poorly scalable, because for each platform the brand has to create its own content.
• In most media there are no institutions working with “native” advertisers.
• The format is not available to many advertisers due to the high cost of production and placement.
• advertising campaign is heavy and inflexible. It is possible to create and coordinate a special project for 3 months that nobody needs.

How to technologically solve the problems of native advertising and expand the market

As a technology company, we solve problems with our own tools. We have a package - a widget with content and advertising on the sites of 400 Russian media and recommendatory algorithms that revolve inside.

Advertising in a widget can solve the main problems of sponsored content:

• The advertiser places content on his side. This allows brands to avoid a tight fit for the editorial format.
• advertising campaign is not tied to specific content created under one platform. The ad is automatically shown to the relevant audience on many sites.
• scalable budget. Calculating by CPC (Pay Per Click) allows the advertiser to determine how much he pays.
• the brand gets access to the audience of many sites at once.
• Advertising looks like regular site content.
• average CTR of 3%.

To be continued

For advertisers: we will tell you how to make good branded content on your side. If the content is already there, and you want to try it in action, we will help you find an audience. Write to ads@relap.io

For media: Soon we will make an update on the monetization of our sites.