Native mobile advertising has been a big discipline in the advertising world for a few years now. However, many business owners (and even many marketing experts) haven't fully got to grips with it.

As the digital world continues to become more mobile, advertising needs to keep up, to ensure that the correct audiences can be reached.

Native mobile advertising is an important part of that, and is the first step to making the most of it for your brand. Because of this, understanding it, is absolutely essential.

What Is Native Advertising?

Native advertising in the digital world refers to advertising that is unique to the platform it is on. It can be described as pushing commercial messages while these have the appearance of ‘normal’ content. For example, promoted tweets on Twitter or sponsored posts on Facebook are both examples of native advertising.

As well as within social media, mobile native advertising appears in feeds, content, commerce platforms, and even map applications and games.

What makes mobile native advertising so important?

When looking specifically at mobile’s influence on native advertising, it suddenly becomes an essential method that everyone should be using.

Firstly, one of the best greatest benefits is that it doesn't take long to get great content out there. In many cases, unless you want to specifically create something more complex, you’ll only need a quality image and a line or two of strong copy to create an advert.

Another advantage of using mobile native advertising is that ads tend to perform well and you often see higher rates of engagement with mobile native ads in comparison to banners. This is partly down to the fact users find them to be much less obtrusive, as the adverts better integrate with the organic content found on the app or website.

Because of this, the use of mobile native advertising is on the rise. This due to both its effectiveness as a medium and also the rise of mobile devices becoming the default for various tasks, including search, social media, apps, mobile games and more.

Different Categories of Mobile Native Advertising

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of places that mobile native advertising can be seen. The Mobile Marketing Association has identified a number of categories for mobile native advertising products including in-feed social, content and commerce advertising, as well as in-map, in-game, and paid search.

Each of these categories represents a different type of mobile advert and experience for the user:

• In-feed social: These adverts include promoted content from advertisers, as well as certain users’ posts. An example is a Facebook ad where users are told how many of their friends currently “Like” the company’s page. This is a great way to build social proof and trust with consumers on these networks.
• In-feed content: This incorporates editorial streams, feeds and walls shown within both unpaid (organic) and paid (sponsored) content. In this sense, content can mean music (Soundcloud), email inboxes (Gmail), videos (YouTube) and games, as well as written articles. With appropriate targeting and a strong ad, these can work well to gain interest from your intended audience.
• In-feed commerce: Places like Amazon, Etsy and the Apple App Store all have feeds of organic product listings but they also have promoted products, which are usually at the top or made to stand out, in one way or another. These are great if you want to increase your reach within the big audiences these sites provide.
• In-map content: These are adverts shown when you are looking through map applications, such as Google Maps, on your mobile. These can be organically generated business listings or native ads and are perfect for local businesses trying to capitalise on users looking for something in particular within the area.
• In-game adverts: These ads are shown within game applications. Often, rewards (such as game currency) are provided for engaging with the advert, be that through click-through or watching the entire video. This is very common in “free-to-play” games such as Angry Birds and Clash of Clans and are good for targeting those already highly-engaged with their mobile device.
• Paid search: This has existed on desktop for a long time and allows brands to place their ads in prominent places within search results. An example of this is with Google Adwords, where sponsored ads will show just above organic rankings. As you are displaying ads to those with specific search intent, it’s still very effective.

How Can You Use Mobile Advertising?

If you understand mobile native advertising then you should be convinced of its benefits. However, it’s essential you understand how to generate strong ROI and to do this quickly, while it’s growing, so you don't end up behind other brands.

Still, mastering the nuances of mobile native advertising and finding the right ways to use isn’t easy. Native-oriented ad exchanges help you gain access to the right resources and working with an advertising firm connected to these exchanges guarantees you’ll be able to create excellent, effective campaigns.

If you are looking to use mobile native advertising to increase your advertising ROI, Targetoo are experts in programmatic mobile advertising and can effectively guide you to creating the most efficient and high-performing adverts. If you would more information, get in touch.