Native advertisement as a concept gained widespread prominence somewhere around 2012. When the users and publishers were slowly getting riled by the banner ads, native advertisement still in its infancy was slowly getting a foothold.

Native advertising is a type of online advertising, where in the function and the form present on any platform matches with the advertisement, and blends with the content all around it.

For the publishers who were bleeding profusely because of the banner ads, this development certainly came as a whiff of fresh air. These are also advertorials that seem to be normal and regular editorial content, but on closer observation they are nothing but highlighting a particular brand and enhancing their brand.

The primary focus of these native ads is to create a room in the minds of the customers about a particular brand. Presently customers have developed a rather sharp vision when it comes to identifying brands, and thus a brand which gels in with the editorial content leaves a lasting impression.

This concept was embraced by publishers whole-heartedly, since these provided a rescue option for the publishers whose revenues were at an all-time low, because of the failure and redundancy of banner ads. Now, currently the spending of native ads has surpassed all estimates and is only growing exponentially. As more and more publishers identified the immense potential of native advertising the penetration grew, and profits flooded in. And now, they are looking forward to exploring many more options and techniques to widen their reach, and in the process discovering new ways to extract profit and earn money.

But as it happens with any trend, after a period of boom, there is bound to be saturation, and very soon, familiar challenges will confront the publishers; challenges which they faced with banner ads.

Advertisements are slowly moving towards real-time bidding (as we explained in our earlier post), and hence ads have to managed, viz., they have to be fragmented into different parts like headlines, snippets, images, flash appearances or a logo, which is reassembled according to the demand and then these are sporadically introduced into the content that the user is going through. So, very often these ‘pop-ups’ appear out of context and rather very ungainly. So, just like everything else, even the publishers will have to evolve.

Now since the term pop-up has been introduced, let us think back to the problems users faced when pop-up ads started surfacing. These ads would be very intermittent and would divert the attention from the actual content. The fact that even display ads are forced to take the path of pop-ups has once again raised the question about tackling digital ads with an astute strategy. Of course, there is the provision of ad-blockers which can be used, but this is not a long-term solution.

So, once again if ad-blockers are used by people to block these native ads also, the publishers will be back at level zero. But then, is it too early to jump the gun and draw conclusions?

Facebook, Twitter and even Buzzfeed have been examples of platform that have maximized the use of this technique. Hence, there is an available blue-print, and now it is up to the users and their strategies. If the standards are met, and ads which are effective are rolled out, they will find acceptance. Most importantly, the content should never be compromised with, and the users should be able to access what they want without too many disturbances.