Not familiar with native ads? Native advertising is known when there are ads on a website that look like part of the website publisher’s content, but it’s an advertisement instead.
For instance, if you go on espn.com and you see a bunch of picture sqaures at the bottom of the story you’re reading that have headlines about who the wealthiest athletes are, what weight loss techniques athletes use, the best looking wives of athletes, etc, then you have seen native ads.
They look like they’re a part of espn, but they’re ads and when you click on them, you go to the advertiser’s website.
The internet marketing industry is split on the effectiveness and ethical merit of this technique, but regardless, Bing and Yahoo are launching a native ad product to small businesses. The native ads will function as part of their banner ad product.
The downside in the current moment is the lack of control that the advertiser has. Essentially Bing’s algorithm will determine which website publishers are a fit for your company’s native ad.
Advertisers and publishers are always trying to figure out how to make more money off their ads and the point of the native ads is to increase phone calls and other conversions from banner ads.
My opinion is that it’s possible the native ads could help the banner ad product, but it doesn’t change that the biggest potential of banner ads is including a “call button” where advertisers dont pay for a click or thousand views, they pay for someone pushing on the call button on their cell phone.