Dear Native Advertising Networks: Transparency is Important

I’m absolutely baffled when I hear that media buyers actually purchase inventory from ad networks without a full site list, without control over which sites make sense for a given campaign, and without detailed site-level reporting.

This is especially important with native advertising because context matters, as does organic content that lives around sponsored/promoted brand content. One of the reasons why some native ad networks force media buyers to purchase blindly is because these networks don’t have quality inventory.

Today, media buyers rightfully demand full disclosure to evaluate every nook and cranny where the brand content might appear for the duration of a campaign. This demand for transparency enhances the quality of inventory offered by networks and makes transparency an industry standard.

Here are some ways ThoughtLeadr is helping media buyers by setting the right example for other native ad networks…

TRANSPARENCY

ThoughtLeadr prides itself on transparency, so advertisers know the exact sites and apps where their brand content will run. No one likes to purchase blindly and no one should purchase blindly. This is especially important with native advertising because the content must match the context in an integrated way that goes well beyond “look-and-feel” but also considers the actual voice and spirit of the campaign. Additionally, we provide site-level reporting to evaluate performance and optimize on the fly.

QUALITY OF ONLINE AND MOBILE PUBLISHERS

ThoughtLeadr focuses on publisher partnerships that provide true scale and quality for advertisers. Every week, our business development team integrates new online and mobile publishers to enhance our offering. The team curates amongst trusted and well-known publishers that have strong brand equity and sizable followings, typically over 1,000,000 monthly unique users. Publishers are brands in and of themselves, and we want to connect advertisers with users that are loyal to these publishers so users can enjoy high-impact branded experiences within the sites and apps they love and trust.

QUALITY OF NATIVE AD PLACEMENTS

Our team focuses on sourcing premium placements with our direct publisher relationships. You can’t get more premium than a publisher’s content well. It’s the holiest piece of real estate. With native advertising, these placements are up for sale, provided that brand content is good, i.e. created with context and user experience in mind. ThoughtLeadr’s publisher integrations and relationships are so tight that branded content will live on forever. This incentivizes accountability and quality brand content.

SCALE

One of the reasons media buyers will partner with an ad network is to achieve scale, touching a sizeable number of people that are relevant to the advertiser. Before native advertising became a buzzword, scale was one of the primary arguments that tried to mute the hype around brand content distribution. However, ThoughtLeadr has solved this concern by expanding its online and mobile reach to over 140,000,000 monthly unique users in the USA, larger than any other native ad network. That’s almost 1 in every 2 Americans.

Arton Gjonbalaj heads up ThoughtLeadr’s native ad sales, connecting brands with consumers in a human way that provokes real conversation and drives meaningful engagement. Follow him on Twitter @ArtonGjonbalaj.

Incentivized Video Views Are Bad

I was reading Mike Shields’s recent article covering Jun Network. It got me thinking about incentivized video views and I figured I should jot my thoughts down.

I don’t place much value in an incentivized view. Being an avid mobile gamer (a common place for incentivized views), I know gamers are ignoring the video view to get the prize. Brands shouldn’t set themselves up to be the “system”  in the old adage, “gaming the system”.

More importantly, incentivized views create a situation where a user will watch content that is completely irrelevant to them. Networks that run incentivized views gain little advantage in proper audience targeting (in fact, targeting just reduces their user base). Great creative and targeting don’t drive success. The virtual prize does. In economics, this situation is typically referred to as information asymmetry or more commonly known as moral hazard.

Most arguments for incentivized views revolve around comparisons to television ads. Users are incentivized to watch commercials on TV by the quality programming. I agree with this statement. However, I’d also like to add that TV ads generally suck. Honestly, when was the last time you actually watched an entire commercial break outside the Super Bowl? Why would you want to continue using such a limited advertising format in digital?

You can build practically any experience the mind can imagine. And I guess that’s it — the thing that ticks me off so much about incentivized views. It’s the lack of imagination in a space so rich with potential.

tl;dr – Incentivized views are bad and you should feel bad using them.