If banner ads are still a part of your digital strategy, please…keep reading. With the average click through rate of .19%, a well-known term called “banner blindness,” and over 600 million devices armed with ad-blockers, this marketing strategy is a dying breed. But don’t get discouraged. Native advertising is a new technique that is leading the way. It is becoming an increasingly popular high-ROI strategy for brands and their digital marketing campaigns.

What is Native Advertising?

Native advertising blends in seamlessly with content a user is already viewing (think editorial content). They’re often written in a similar tone and style to the content being read and unless it had a “sponsored content” tag, you probably wouldn’t be able to recognize it.

5 Reasons Native Advertising Will Dominate:

Preferred User Experience

Audiences increasingly consume more content from their smartphones rather than a desktop. Banner ads, especially in mobile format are notoriously unpopular. Sites deliver native ads in-stream or in-feed, helping advertisers avoid distracting mobile banner ads.  You might notice these ads, but they will not distract you from what you were previously doing.

1. Work With Your Publishing Partners

Though it’s possible to syndicate native content to many partners, the most successful campaigns are those where advertisers and website owners work together on a sponsored content strategy that benefits both entities. Not only will this help foster positive relationships with hosts, but if your post boosts the site that’s hosting you, it could mean additional revenue for them. This may result in savings on ad spends the next time your contract is up for negotiation.

2. Highly Targeted, Contextual Information

By targeting specific sites, devices and locations, native advertising can help you sell your Quick Lube Oil Change service on MSN Autos or promote the new location of your Manhattan Pizza Shop on the New York Times website.

3. Paying to Play

Around two million blog posts are published each day, making it more difficult to break out with helpful and exciting content. Utilizing native placements while is a fast and powerful way to announce your content where your dollars spent gain you a guaranteed audience.

4. It’s All in The Numbers – It Works

Adweek has us convinced…

• While the Click-Through-Rate on display ads is a dwindling 0.19%, native advertising can scale it up to 8% with the right image and headline.
• As long as sponsored online content is interesting, 57% of millennials are willing to check it out
• Viewers spend just as much time scanning past native ads, as editorial content. Editorial content takes 1.2 seconds to scan past compared to native ads at 1 second.
• Brand recognition can increase by 82% because of native advertising.

5. Everyone’s Doing It… Especially Your Competition

90% of publishers offer opportunities for native ads. Competitors investing big money in native advertising networks will leave companies who don’t far behind. The U.S. native advertising industry was worth $4.7 billion in 2013, and this number will grow to $21 billion by 2018
Take our advice – invest in native advertising this year or suffer from banner blindness forever.