Marketers are still trying to figure out the best way to advertise online. Outbound vs. Inbound, Sponsored vs. Native, SEO vs. PPC, what does the future of digital marketing look like? A lot of marketing firms, for example Hubspot, believe that paid advertising or outbound advertising is in the past. Other’s believe that paid is the way of the future! Paid advertising has already changed drastically in such a short amount of time. More and more money is being pumped into online marketing, and less and less is being pumped into other more traditional media outlets. Digital marketing spend is predicted to increase by 35% of total budgets by 2016.
The debate is on. But who is right? What does the future of paid advertising look like?
I cannot answer this question definitively, but I can sure as heck give you my two cents on the topic. First we should discuss Native Advertising and Programmatic Ad buying. Automation advertising company Sharethrough defines native advertising as a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. To explain further, the ad flows with the content. The ad actually looks and acts like content. Depending on who you are, you may or may not like this idea. Think of it like this: your reading a blog about how to bake the perfect muffin. On the side of the screen you click on a link (ad) to a recipe for a strawberry rhubarb muffin that you would like to check out. The content is great! You decide to make the recipe. After buying the ingredients and getting ready to start, you open up to the page of the recipe and realize that the content was actually provided to you by a local flour company, let’s call the company Flour4U. Would you be outraged in their attempt to advertise to you in this fashion, because at first glance you didn’t notice that the recipe was an ad? Or would you be delighted that a company could create such compelling advertising content that you almost didn’t notice who it was from? This is the issue with native advertising. Transparency. This is the issue with a lot of today’s marketing efforts. This leads me perfectly into how I see the future of successful paid advertisements. Reputation is everything. If you or Flour4U is not clear in letting readers know that the content provided is in fact an advertisement then shame on you! In this podcast episode of StartUp by Alex Blumberg, you can hear about a real life native advertising “no-no.” The start up company was looking to gain sponsors and was not clear about its intentions. When your not clear or transparent and something goes wrong (mistakes happen!) then your reputation is going down and your reputation is the best thing you have going for you. I think that native advertising will need to be less sneaky and more transparent in order to hold any long-term success for the future. This may completely change it’s meaning, but I think that good content is still viable. A completely different type of advertising known as programmatic ad buying, is another big trend right now. But what is it?
I mentioned the company Sharethrough earlier when I gave the definition of native advertising. Sharethrough is actually an automation advertising firm. Automative advertising and programmatic ad buying go hand in hand because they are both based on automation. Programmatic ad buying is using software to purchase your ad space for you, often through a bidding system opposed to the traditional forms that require human interference. Basically a computer is buying your ads for you. If you are still not grasping the concept, below is a video explaining programmatic ad buying to an eight year old.
Trends come and go, fast. Especially in the world of digital marketing. Project Runway host Heidi Klum says it best “One day your in, the next your out.” That is why it is important to hone in on the things that do work for paid advertising and ditch the things that don’t. As far as programmatic ad buying goes, I see a huge future for this trend. Automation or computerized systems make things a lot easier and if you know anything about digital marketing you know how stressful it can be. Programmatic ad buying allows you to buy ad space in real time- which is huge! The bidding process for an online ad space happens so quickly, the bid can even go through multiple intermediaries and it still only takes about 1/10th of a single second. Crazy right. These intermediaries for example, DoubleClick by Google rake in some solid profit. Sometimes 45 cents of every dollar spent on the ad space. There are so many things to keep track of and new marketing tools and opportunities keep popping up left and right which can make it difficult to truly master the skills. Anything to ease the paid advertising buying process in this day and age is really going to take off. Especially a system that supports a function that does not necessarily need human input. I think that it is important to step in when needed and to always double-triple check your programmatic system for bugs or mistakes often. Make sure that who you are buying from or your middle man is a reliable and reputable source!
So it really comes down to transparency, reputation and support systems. The future success of paid advertising will depend on the transparency of your company, your company’s reputation and your company’s ability to keep up with the ever-growing number of support systems.
Jaclyn Celine 