Why native ads are the new black

With the death of the old tyrant known as banner ads, the throne of the advertising realm awaits a new king. The old king’s regime merely lasted twenty years, but it sure made it into the history books; the banner ad, infamously known to be intrusive, disruptive and irrelevant, usurped the throne of a new digital dynasty in the midst of chaos.

The rise of banner ads

It was October 1994 when marketers, advertisers and content publishers saw the “dot-com” boom coming in and took out their surfboards to ride the crazy tsunami.

In a mad rush to monetize, Hotwired, the digital arm of Wired magazine, launched their first banner ads and raked in $20 million in yearly revenue. When other publications and content creators first saw the huge revenue potential of hosting banner ads, they too hopped on the bandwagon, hoping to capitalize with a first-mover advantage.

Those who benefited from the rise of banner ads applauded the success of the business model. Now, content creators and publications can generate revenue, while marketers and advertisers can, for the first time, understand exactly how many people viewed their ads and how many of them interacted with it, something which the traditional media cannot deliver.

While it seems like a net gain, the media industry went into a blind gold rush and it did not take long before everything spun out of control. Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, believes that “It’s almost like a prank that was played by the technology industry on the media industry 20 years ago,” as quoted in an interview.

Banner ads from the user’s perspective

While the banner ad presents itself as a new monetisation model for publishers and an excellent marketing channel for brand marketers and advertisers, it was downright ugly for users.

As the use of banner ads proliferated, they became saturated on websites beyond control.

 In the advertising realm, where the only currency is attention, the citizens have decided to stop paying taxes to the king.

It became a sideshow clown, degrading the user experience and affecting the usability of any website. Research published by web usability expert Jakob Nielson proved that users eventually developed ‘banner blindness’, which explains how users almost never looked at anything that resembles ads, whether or not it is actually an ad.

When tracking the eye movements in an experiment, the elements on the test site deliberately designed to look like ads rarely caught the eye of users. No matter how relevant the ads were, users began to adapt themselves to ignore sidebar panels and header banners, and go straight to where the main content was. This blindness gradually led to a decrease in click-through rates.

In the advertising realm, where the only currency is attention, the citizens have decided to stop paying taxes to the king.

So it’s time for publishers to go back to the drawing board. If we learnt anything from the previous fallen empire, it is that user experience should never be compromised.

To make ads more effective while creating a reliable and scalable source of revenue for publishers, ads have to look less like a distraction and more like a native component of your site. I’m not the first one to think of this, of course. Just ask Jonah Peretti.

Native ads: win-win?

The success of native advertising so far

What’s next?

The challenge for niche publishers