5 Promising Companies that are Doing Native Mobile Advertising Right (mobrulers.com)

Native advertising has been quite the buzzword at digital marketing conferences and trade shows since last 2 years and more so in the context of mobile. So much that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘Sleeping giant’ at most conferences!

So what really is native advertising and why does mobile need it more than ever?

Native advertising is any message thats a regular ad but gels incredibly well with the context and content around it. If you are a Facebook user you definitely see them everyday and possibly already have an opinion about whether you like them or not! The idea is to engage the ‘Banner blind’ user in the best way possible. The powerful point here is that the user experience and design is largely defined by the publisher and not by the advertiser (So yes thats a reason Native might kick banner’s butt!)

Types of Natives ads on Mobile

Broadly natives ads come under one of the following categories

• Instream Ads: With more properties switching to a live stream content style, native messages plugged within streams such as those on Facebook and Twitter is gaining traction.

• Activity Triggered Ads: These formats gel well with ‘Events’ within the app/site. A good example is a reward or offer for completing a round of a particular game.

• Branded Conent: While adver-games have been there for a long time, more content oriented sites are finding innovative ways to plugin branded messages within their apps/sites. This works very well if the positioning of the brand and the mobile property go well together. Lets say adventure app branded in Red Bull skin could work well for the brand.

• Mobile Only: Formats that work better on mobile like Click-to-call

The Facebooks and Twitters aside, there is a new breed of companies solely focused on Native Advertising. Here is a list of the top guns among them

Triplelift focuses on image driven properties with a strong social spin. Formats that look beautiful on Pinterest and other visual blogs with clear disclaimer calling them ‘sponsored’ is refreshing for the user, at the same time could get some positive brownie points for the brands. The reason I love Triplelift is because of their emphasis on aesthetics and shareablity – which is a fantastic balance between the user and the sale proposition.

Nativex has a strong emphasis on helping gamers monetize through native content. These are interstitial ads with the same look and feel as the game itself presented between ‘Events’/breaks within the games. Natives also stands way ahead in using intelligent server side algorithm to estimate interests of the user – which as the company claims affects ROI for advertisers. Also they get additional brownie points from me for being self serve!

Nativo focuses on multi-device scalability by being easily enabling advertisers to implement cross-device campaigns quickly. The target properties are visual blogs, in-stream placements and content rich infotainment properties  – all promising plenty of opportunities for advertisers to put the messages across.

Avocarrot is a mobile only network and has a good spread of balance between reward based ads, app install and high engaging HD video format – all in the native format. They promise quick integration for publishers and real time reporting. Many of their features including in-stream ads are still in private-beta, so they truly fit into the underdogs I want to highlight in this post!

Apart from the fact that Brian Wong is one of  the youngest tech leaders to get funded more than $15 Million while building Kiip, the platform is fantastic for mobile gaming, utility and entertainment properties alike. Kiip focuses on reward based messages within apps/sites during what they call ‘moments’. They recently launched a selfserve platform and have been previously featured on MobRulers.

Will finally advertisers and developers find a way to focus only on native messages on mobile and kick out the banners, only time will tell.