predictions for native advertising 2018 - Amic

PREDICTIONS FOR NATIVE ADVERTISING 201 8

Table of Contents #1 Anda Gansca

#19 Rickard Lawson

#2 Taj Forer

#20 Irina Pashina

#3 Melanie Deziel

#21 Karsten Jentsch

#4 Erin Lanuti

#22 Pete Fergusson

#5 Kim Robertz

#23 Line Prasz

#6 Rita Orschiedt

#24 Ally Stuart

#7 Alex Erlmeier

#25 Benjamin Solomon

#8 Jeppe Madsbad Lauritzen

#26 Julien Mosse

#9 Stephanie Losee

#27 Maria Marteleur

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#10 Joie Healy

#28 Pontus Staunstrup

#11 Chad Pollitt

#29 Jacob Stensdal,

#12 Annie Granatstein

#30 Mickael Ferreira,

#13 Hannah Meium

#31 Lauren Reddy

#14 Thomas Stokholm

#32 Lindsey Clarke

#15 Lon Otremba

#33 Susan Borst

#16 Nataša Šudelija

#34 Jesper Laursen

#17 Johannes Ceh

#35 Ana Plisic

#18 Jonna Ekman

#36 Michael Villasenor

TO AC K G O B PAG E THIS

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Introduction

2018 – We Are Ready for the Future of Native Advertising. Question is: Are you? As 2018 has just begun, we are all taking a step back to reflect and look forward. With a new year comes new opportunities, new silver linings, and new goals to strive for to become even more excellent than you were yesterday. And in order to develop your 2018 native advertising moonshot strategy, it might be the time to take advice from your peers. This also applies to the peers that are related to the native advertising industry - the NAI community.

While native advertising is still a somewhat adolescent discipline, it’s a discipline that’s growing up fast and here at the Native Advertising Institute expectations are high for all the native advertising work we are going to see in 2018. Your work included. Therefore, our hope is that this ebook will give you a gentle push in the right direction in terms of getting your mindset right and being ready to buckle up for what’s coming up next.

If you are planning on becoming a more glorious version of yourself as a native ad practitioner in 2018, take a look at these deep insights and reflections from renowned native advertising professionals.

As this quote aptly puts it: “Dear Past, thank you for all the lessons. Dear Future, I am ready!!!”

This ebook presents you with 36 predictions from native advertising experts around the world who share what it takes for you to become truly successful with native advertising in 2018.

Jesper Laursen Founder and CEO, Native Advertising Institute

3 / Published by: Native Advertising Institute

Editor: Johanne Eliasson

Best wishes,

Design: Askan Thomas

Anda Gansca, CEO and Co-Founder, Knotch

Going back to being human and more content studios I will go against the grain here and say that, as much as I am a technologist and want to believe that we should scale content production and make it real time targeted, I actually believe that the power of native advertising, to some extent, comes from the fact that it is so personal and so immersive. So I actually think that a trend for 2018 will be going back to being human, which means bigger campaigns that are higher touch and a lot more personal to the audience. Another trend — that is almost the opposite of this — is that we will see brands building their own content studios. These content studios will possibly be a little bit more nimble, creating more snackable content that can scale. Then we will see a difference between the same brand working with someone like the New York Times or big content partners that can create a really immersive campaign, while at the same time focusing on really cost-effective, snackable, scaleable content consumption internally.

4 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Taj Forer, Co-Founder and CEO, Fabl

Deeper, long-term partnerships I would say the biggest trend, and the one that I am most excited about, is deeper partnerships between brands and publishers. What I see coming in 2018 is a much deeper partnership where these relationships are longer-term, where the experience of the content is higher touch, higher value. The volume of branded stories that are published as part of this cohesive program grows and so does the value it creates for everyone. So I think that these deeper partnerships — like branded content hubs and microsites — is where things are going. We will see a deeper investment from the brands and more dedication from the native advertising studio to a single client. Then, at the end of the day, the consumer has an ongoing experience of this content in a series that they are made aware of, that they have a destination for, and that they can expect and return to — just like they would to a magazine coming out every month. So it’s all about a very beautiful, hybrid approach to developing content, developing business, and then delivering phenomenal experiences for consumers. 5 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Melanie Deziel, Branded Content Consultant, Speaker and Educator

Brands bringing value in new formats When I am looking into 2018, the biggest thing for me is seeing how publisher content studios and brands will adapt to the new creative opportunities that are available. Because every year we see more formats coming into play and more ways for us to tell stories or communicate. And every time a new format pops up, my question is always: How do we natively integrate a brand into that experience. Is there a way? Thinking about chatbots, for example, there is a lot of automated chat function and messengers being used to communicate both editorially and with brands. What’s the value that a brand can bring to that experience? And how about 360 video, VR, Augmented Reality? We are really starting to explore these in earnest on the editorial side, and I think it’s exciting to see how brands are finding ways to bring value to all those different environments. As a creator, I think it’s such a cool creative challenge to ask ”What’s the best way for a brand to create value here?”


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Erin Lanuti, Chief Influence Strategist, MSL and Global Lead, Conversation2Commerce

Expansion, business impact and niche influencers One trend is that native is going to go into more formats and platforms and expand to more countries. I am always shocked when I stumble on a country where native doesn’t exist yet, or where it is nascent in its adoption. The second thing is to get data to link native advertising more to sales and to sales impact. A lot of brands are still looking at native based on clicks and cost-per-click, but we need to move it a step further and talk about: What’s the business impact? The third thing I would look at is the rise of niche influencers. There are all these great influencers who are writing unbelievable content. How can we leverage that content in partnership with native to target and scale it in new ways?


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Kim Robertz, Head of Sales & Native Advertising, Ebner Media Group

Getting out of the walled garden In my eyes, the trend in native advertising for 2018 is definitely that more and more companies will join the native advertising family and find out which business opportunities they have with this new marketing mix. Something we all have to do, when we come up with individualised native advertising campaigns for clients, is that we have to get out of the walled garden. We have to start seeding content not only on our own platforms but also spread it along the whole community to other platforms as well. Otherwise, the clients won’t have the scaling effect.


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Rita Orschiedt, Head of Branded Content, ze.tt

Native advertising will rise – and change At ze.tt, we started with sponsored posts, text only. However, as we see it, globally the need for audiovisual content and also podcasts will rise significantly, so we are implementing branded video and branded podcasts and we see many others doing the same. Display advertising is on the decline, which might mean that native advertising is on the rise again in 2018. However, it will also change because the social landscape is always changing. Facebook is changing quite significantly for us as publishers because organic reach has been downgraded. We have to figure out how we can still reach our users with sponsored content, which is going to be more expensive now that there is not much organic reach. So we have to put a lot of budget and targeting into it. I think native is certainly vital in the present and I’m pretty sure it will also be in the future.


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Alex Erlmeier, Managing Director, Central Europe, Outbrain

More programmatic to achieve ROI The first trend will be growth. Native advertising is now skyrocketing, at least here in Europe — We still have to catch up with the US. This is a very good trend because it allows for more innovations and yet more trends. Another trend is definitely that native is going more programmatic, and I think it is a good trend, because it will allow agencies and bigger marketers to combine the effectiveness of native advertising with the efficiency of the old tactics. So it will allow you to get your native placement out there at scale to a broader audience and ultimately achieve ROI with your native advertising.


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Jeppe Madsbad Lauritzen, Nordic Marketing Director, Santander Consumer Bank

Finding a common mission I think the most important trend in 2018 will be media and brands finding a common mission when producing native advertising on a media platform. There should be a better dialogue between the media houses and the brands. Right now, we see media houses building up in-house content studios and they are, of course, driven by the fact that they see commercial business. However, it is important to focus on the real mission, which is to create great content and distribute in in the right way and through that, make money. If the media houses focus only on the money, we will not be able to create good native advertising.


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Stephanie Losee, Head of Content, VISA

A shift in measurement The trends I see for native in 2018 include a shift in measurement. I think that publishers are understanding that what they have at hand are publisher metrics, but they have to tie them to a shift in reputation if that is what a brand is looking for, a shift in perceptions or as I thought about a lot when I was at Politico — a shift in policy. Did the campaign achieve that shift? Those are tougher questions to answer, so I think publishers are trying to find ways to answer that greater question of ”What did I want to achieve with this native ad campaign?”


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Joie Healy, Corporate Social Media Lead, Cisco

Social media, influencer marketing, and real time stories I think in 2018, we are going to see a lot more native on social media like Snapchat and Instagram Stories. I think companies are getting really smart at how they are delivering messages through those different platforms. Another thing that is going to be big — it is already pretty prominent — is a lot of influencer marketing. More use of influencers to help you tell your story and having them share on their own platforms because they have a bigger audience. Whether it is a tech influencer or somebody in the marketing field, I think it is important to identify those individuals who are going to help you build your brand and the messaging around it. I also think real time stories and quick turn stories are going to be more prominent. I think a lot of companies are doing it right now, but the companies that are doing it well are going to rise to the top. So being able to have — within a company — maybe a little agency that can quickly turn around content that is relevant to them will be valuable. 13 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Chad Pollitt, Native advertising expert, CMO influencer, and keynote speaker

Blockchain and AI The newest and perhaps most exciting trend that is beginning to crop up is blockchain. It is the technological foundation for today’s crypto currencies. Its impact will be significantly felt in the programmatic native world – driving down costs, while eliminating waste and fraud. It’s likely we will see a torrent of blockchain startups specialising in online marketing and advertising in 2018. Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue its proliferation into the native space and the analytics we use to measure it. We are seeing AI, machine learning and/or natural language processing being used in programmatic native solutions as well as influencer advertising solutions. Many of the most successful demand side platforms (DSPs) have some form of AI already integrated. 2018 will be the year supply side platforms (SSPs) will start to embrace AI en masse. In addition, there’s a new wave of AI-driven analytics cropping up in 2018. These solutions will completely disrupt the traditional tools many are used to using, such as Google Analytics and Adobe Omniture. These will allow marketers to be more choosy with how they spend their native ad dollars, thus maximising return. 14 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Annie Granatstein, Head of WP BrandStudio at The Washington Post

Personalisation and immersive experiences One trend is personalisation. The more you can make the content be tailored to an individual reader the better and there are several ways to do this. You can have personalised content delivered within ad units that are operating on algorithms that know what kind of content readers are most interested in, whether it is video, infographics, or articles. Another is to actually ask the audience and have their answers determine what content is delivered to them. However, you have to be careful that you don’t make it a barrier to entry to the content or you’ll lose a lot of the audience. You should allow them to also scroll into the content at will. I will also say immersive experiences. Taking you reader and putting them inside the story where they really think it’s surrounding them. It is not a new trend, but I think the technology around how you tell immersive experiences is evolving by the second. Another trend that is getting more and more esteemed is gleaning your own first-party data and then feeding that into your content. If you have your own data to collect, then whatever you have to say using that data will never have been said before. 15 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Hannah Meium, Director of Content, DDB

More rigour around disclosure The trend we can probably expect in 2018 for native advertising is seeing it in more places. I think that when Facebook Live first launched, they then figured out how brands are going to be on there. We are seeing publishers creating custom shows for Facebook Watch now, and l anticipate that, pretty soon, Facebook will figure out how brands can be incorporated into that as well. Another trend that I hope we will see is more rigour around disclosures. Currently, there are guidelines about how we are supposed to disclose native advertising, but there aren’t set rules for what it should say. So some publications will say ”paid content”, some will say ”paid post”, and some will say ”sponsored”. I think this leads to confusion and mistrust, so I hope that there will be more rigour and structure around it so it can be more consistent from publisher to publisher.


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Thomas Stokholm, Creative Director at Story Studio, Ekstra Bladet

Breaking native and working closer “Breaking Native” could and should be trending for publishers in 2018. High-end native content in the centre of context for users and readers can easily supply traditional news production with valuable in-depth information and digital tools. Working with breaking native also enables content providers to produce ahead of schedule, aligning with known calendar events and expected quarterly events. Odds are that native content moving up the page, competing with news articles and clips, also will force both editorial and commercial teams to work closer together to secure best daily practice and transparency both in-house and, most importantly, to our customers.


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Lon Otremba, CEO, Bidtellect

No wall between content creation and content distribution In 2018, the barrier between content creation and content distribution will finally come down. Brands have already begun to move toward contentfirst strategies and away from offer-driven marketing, but 2018 will be a truly transitional year. Right now, content creation and content distribution (native advertising) often exist in silos, preventing one from influencing the other and causing marketers to miss a significant opportunity when it comes to their content marketing strategy and execution. With the two pieces linked, marketers can gather behavioural insights from distribution campaigns and feed them back into their creation strategy, leading to smarter, more valuable content for consumers. Creating and distributing high-quality content will help advertisers move away from an “offer-driven” approach and create an overall optimised experience for the end user. 18 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Nataša Šudelija, Head of Native Advertising, 24sata

Brands will understand that native is now I wish I could say that VR and AR will become mainstream and that brands will see how native advertising is more effective than TV ads. But that is just wishful thinking, at least in Croatia. What I can say is that 2018 will be the year when brands truly understand that native advertising is the NOW and that they better hitch their wagon to this star. They will realise that no other form of advertising can build that kind of a connection to their brand like native can. Will they try to interfere in the end product and put their logo and product wherever they can? Yes. Educating the market is also going to be a big part of our tasks for 2018. Nevertheless, native ads are going to become a normal part of every serious brand advertising strategy, allowing publishers to do what they do best: engage with their audience. As a response to that, we will see more creative and engaging content that will be more multimedia and multi-platform in nature. Storytelling and creativity will beat pushy, irrelevant and tacky forms of advertising and restore advertising’s good name. 20 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Johannes Ceh, Content Strategist and Consultant

No longer a buzzword Decision makers will get a wider understanding of the impact native advertising can have for their business. Native will no longer be understood as a single discipline or a buzzword. With a smart planning and execution, native can drive growth and be an accelerator of human-centric company transformation. With that understanding, native is a sustaining investment in customer experience and a company’s future.

Jonna Ekman, Marketing Manager, Kit.se

Telling stories through video As has everyone else, we see that video is growing really fast. Brands are increasingly understanding that video is a good way to tell stories, so that is a trend that I think will grow even more in 2018. 21 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Rickard Lawson, Managing Director, Strossle Norway

Focus on collaborative efforts 2017 was a turnaround year for understanding that simply disrupting your audience was not the same as getting their positive attention. 2018 will take us further down this path, but it will be driven by something that is still an unfamiliar concept for many businesses: it will be fuelled by collaborative efforts. In an economy so dominated by Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, aka “The Four”, competing on technology or data is simply not feasible. The remaining alternatives are: get squashed or start thinking outside the box! If you are entering the new year with any of the following flaws you are most likely going to end 2018 with a weaker market position, or you won’t make it the end of 2018 at all: • You don’t have quality information about what your consumers want, or you are reliant on a third party to get that data. • You consider yourself untouchable in your market because it is limited by either language or cultural barriers. • You’re focusing your efforts on maximising your profits when talking to your suppliers and vendors. 22 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Irina Pashina, Senior Director, Content Strategy & Customer Experience, SAP Marketing

Customer experience will take centre stage Customer experience is the key brand differentiator and driver of business results. The commitment to compelling customer experience will take more centre stage in native advertising in 2018. Providing value and relevant content in every interaction will be a prerequisite for the success of native advertising efforts. The truly audience-centric and patient professionals and brands committed to serving their customers at every step of the journey will win. We will see a clearer focus on tying native advertising to tangible business results in the context of the end-to-end customer experience. “Have native advertising initiatives met the business objectives set upfront?” will become a more standard question paving the way to more meaningful insights about the effectiveness of native advertising. Reader’s trust is a scarce commodity in times of fake news and general distrust. Earning and rebuilding it will remain a challenge in 2018. Delivering honest, accurate, high-quality content consistently must be a priority and the way forward for both brands and publishers. 23 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Karsten Jentsch, Vice President of TV Sites & Verticals, RTL Interactive GmbH

Growth of video content In 2018, we will experience further growth, especially in relation to branded video content. The demand and consumption of video content will rise with telecommunication companies and platform operators further providing the means for this growth by offering faster and cheaper data tariffs as well as video-centric platform features. The challenge for video content producers and publishers will be to properly serve that demand by producing highly engaging video content that is custom made for audience and platform. Publishers with professional video production units, capable of producing everything from TV to 360 and VR content, will be well prepared to master this challenge. The rise of video consumption will offer great opportunities for branded stories - especially when combining a great story with the right video format according to platform and audience. For this to happen, marketing, adtech and sales will need to work more closely with video content publishers, offering the optimal end to end production and distribution of branded video content.


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Pete Fergusson, Owner and CEO, Nemorin Creative Film & Video

Focus on labeling and more experimentation Native advertising and branded content is not going anywhere. It is a rapidly growing market and 2018 is all set to be a very exciting year. Native still needs to find its feet, though, it is still in an early stage. So perhaps we’ll see more experimentation and trial and error. For me, I think we have really got to work on the labelling. It’s too messy at the moment, it is not consistent and, I think, ultimately that could be dangerous because we will potentially alienate the audience. Once that is settled, we are all set for a very exciting 2018.


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Line Prasz, Commercial Editor, Politiken

A focus on sales In 2018, sales will get a lot more attention. More ‘hybrids’, with insights in both content and sales, will be hired exclusively to sell native as more publishers will establish their own inhouse-units functioning as independent bureaus. It is a trend that has been going on for a while, but now we are beginning to see which models work and which don’t. Besides, in countries like Denmark, where true native is fairly unexplored, I believe that more brands will begin to grasp the importance of telling real stories that do not necessarily revolve around a product or service but offer real value for users. It may sound banale, but the conflict between content producers’ ambitions, the limits of the publisher, and the visions and courage of the brands is often still one of the main challenges. I think that the gap between the different ways of thinking will be reduced in 2018. That said, data, new tech possibilities and new ways of integrating native in the publishers’ editorial space will continue to be the way forward.


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Ally Stuart, Managing Director, EMEA at Sharethrough

Increase in liquidity across programmatic In 2017, we saw native display become ubiquitous across every major DSP. As a result, in 2018 will see liquidity increase across the programmatic native ecosystem – particularly as advertisers and publishers now understand that native is as easy to run as any traditional ad format, and is the only viable option for mobile. Demand for native outstream will spearhead native’s growth, helping spend reach an estimated $59.35bn. With nearly infinite potential outstream supply, the video platforms that treat outstream and instream differently will see the most success. 2018 will also see header bidding impact native in a massive way. Publishers can now run native and display bidders in competition for the same ad placements, allowing them to transition a once display-only strategy towards native. Higher average CPMs and better user experiences, along with the ongoing transition of audiences to mobile, will see major publishers move towards to a native-first approach to monetisation. The explosion in supply from header bidding, alongside the maturing buy side, will see native finally become the standard for display advertising as a whole – in 2018 and beyond. 27 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Benjamin Solomon, Director of Creative Development, Vox Creative at Vox Media

Longer Content Formats for Millennials Forget all the misguided stereotypes about Millennials and Gen Z-ers you’ve heard: they will watch more than six seconds in 2018. In the last year, these audiences have begun to eschew the snackable native video that was everywhere in 2017 in favour of content that provides valuable context needed to understand our increasingly complex world. This is a massive opportunity for native advertisers. Those who serve native experiences that empower audiences to “go deeper” into their obsessions will be handsomely rewarded in 2018 via powerful time spent with their brand. Millennials and Gen Z-ers are hungry for more than short form indulgence. Nourish them!


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Julien Mosse, COO, Ligatus Group

Marketers will regain trust In 2017, native programmatic took off, but with it came concerns of transparency and brand safety. This caused many marketers to wonder if the digital ad world is a safe place for their brands. Particularly in the age of programmatic where algorithms determine where ads are placed and who potentially sees them. In 2018 we will see programmatic “clean-up”. Marketers will regain trust and continue to take advantage of the ability to use precision targeting and embrace the possibilities of programmatic native. But with a difference of not only focusing on audience, but more so in adjacency. It pays for brands to be alongside publisher content that fits well with their brands and the audiences who are likely to be interested in their brands. Marketers will look for more trusted and qualitative publisher networks. And publishers will demand higher quality standards from partners.


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Maria Marteleur, Founder, CEO and Digital Strategist, Storstad Medieproduktion

Inviting customers into the mind of the brand All businesses start with an entrepreneur having one single idea on how to solve a specific problem. Entrepreneurs know that their creativity and ability to produce a product will help create a strong and trustworthy brand – in the long run. But, there is a problem. The knowledge about the product is often a “business secret” and customers don’t know it’s brilliance. They are seldom invited to the workshop or the garage where the product is created. That’s a big marketing mistake. We live in a different society now where transparency is key to the customers’ beating hearts. So, what can marketers do? Easy. Show them the product in the making and the people behind. The workshop is the key to a brand’s personality. That’s where the magic happens. I’d love to see brands showing customers why their product is needed. Using AI, VR and eyetracking to add a great storytelling perspective this should be child’s play. So, invite the customer into the mind of “The Brand”. Just. Do. It. Now. That will trend in native advertising in 2018. 30 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Pontus Staunstrup, Digital Strategist

Brands will embrace native video I’m hoping that 2018 will be a breakthrough year for video in native advertising — in the sense that brands embrace it more. While there are companies that already get the advantage of visual content, too many still see text as the default format. Video, and especially video that’s created with an understanding of social media, offers a lot of exciting possibilities for brands, publishers and audience. Here’s to 2018 being a year for great visual storytelling.


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Jacob Stensdal, Content Marketing Manager, Jyllands-Posten

More vivid native stories and cross-media campaigns In 2018, vivid native stories will become more widespread through authentic pictures, music, videos, quizzes, infographics, VR etc. The content will, to a greater extent, engage the consumer and create true value for them. This will happen due to the graphical improvement, but also due to an improvement in the quality of the content. The native stories will be more “true native”, as the advertiser has less need to talk about themselves and their products. Instead, the content will deal with a challenge that the target group has, and indirectly this will create a demand for the products of the advertiser. Furthermore, we will see more cross-media campaigns which will take place across different media and platforms. Again, this will make the stories more vivid, but it will also ensure the advertisers a better reach through their campaigns. Last but not least, we will see a standardisation of the products and the terms within native advertising, from the publishers. Hopefully, this will make it easier for the advertisers to relate to this type of marketing.


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Mickael Ferreira, Co-Founder and CEO, Quantum Advertising

Technology and creativity will unleash potential of native Marketers now have a real opportunity to tell the story of their brand and showcase their products to curated audiences. We are already seeing more fluidity in terms of execution and an increased number of dedicated native strategies; these help maintain a synergy between the market stakeholders (advertisers, agencies, publishers and technology vendors). Branded content and designs, executed programmatically, allow native creatives to come to life and brands to achieve higher quality ads, more meaningful engagements with consumers and better overall results. Today’s “always-connected” users represent a huge opportunity for content providers and brands to come together and create unique experiences. At Quantum, we believe that delivering non-intrusive and innovative formats is key to better communicate and engage with customers. Put simply, native in true form brings new standards to advertising.


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Lauren Reddy, Director of Audience Development, New York Times

A renewed focus on great storytelling There is so much excitement about new technologies, AR, and VR, but I actually think, rather than some hot new trend, 2018 is really going to be about a renewed focus on great storytelling. Regardless of the technology you are using, the underpinning of any excellent campaign that will connect with the readers is a great story. And I think, rather than getting excited by new technology or new formats, there really needs to be a renewed focus on excellent stories that are going to connect with readers.


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Lindsey Clarke, Managing Director, Nativo

Native videos in vertical formats Like that buzz in your ear that is so insistent that you don’t even realise when it’s gone, thankfully we don’t hear that 2018 will be “The Year of Mobile” anymore. We now live in a mobile-first world. In 2017, mobile accounted for 59.9% of all online traffic. In 2018, this growth will accelerate and will impact advertising in major ways. For example, we used to refer to advertising that appears in the feed and surrounded by content as native ads. In mobile, everything is in the feed. Native advertising has become just advertising. But the feed is still a sacred ground for consumers and publishers alike. Interruptive user experiences are even more unacceptable. Advertising will need to earn the right to stay in the feed by delivering value to consumers while supporting the unique experience the publisher is creating. As a result, in 2018 advertisers will increase their investment in content strategies, and much of that content will come in the form of native video produced and delivered in vertical formats. And because native advertising provides such a powerful user experience, look for legislators to enact stricter consumer protections. 35 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Susan Borst, VP, Mobile, IAB

Greater use of video and user-generated content It is encouraging to see studies that show that more brands are now thinking about native content ads as a planned part of their marketing communications versus one-off efforts. With virtually every publisher offering content solutions via in-house content studios, there are more options than ever for brands to develop content designed to engage with consumers in more authentic, relevant and “native” ways. In 2018, we will see an even greater use of video and user-generated content as part of a brand’s storytelling approach. And we will continue to see influencer marketing as a way to help augment native content efforts. Disclosure will remain of paramount importance. It is important that marketers be aware of all FTC guidance related to both native and influencer campaigns.


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Jesper Laursen, Founder and CEO, Native Advertising Institute

Brands will take control Much of native advertising campaigns and projects have been run by agencies and publishers. In 2018 we’ll see more brands taking control for the following reasons: • Because they can. Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are expanding their different educational offerings making it easier for brands to actually know what to do. At the same time, more and more native ad platforms like Outbrain and Storigize are building self-service solutions for brands to tap into. • Because they know how. Brands are hiring more and more content savvy people. It really began with the growth of content marketing and the trend continues with content distribution. • Because they should. Not always, but in many cases, it makes more sense for a brand to be in the driver’s seat - provided they have the capabilities. They can think more strategically and focus on the broader picture building an audience as opposed to just running a specific campaign. And they can save money. 37 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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Ana Plisic, Editorial Director, Hanza Media Native Ad Studio

Native Advertising is going global Native advertising is going to be a really big thing — and not just in Europe or in the US. I have also seen a lot of great work in the Philippines and in India as well. So native advertising is definitely going global.

Michael Villasenor, Executive Creative Director, Hearst

Snackable 360 videos I think, in 2018, the emerging space of 360 video will become even bigger, now that most platforms support it such as Facebook and YouTube. And then publishers themselves using third party platforms to build these experiences. We are going to see, I think, an emergence of what we can call “snackable 360 video”. The opportunity to interact with the scene and the environment that a brand can bring to life in a really easy way. 38 / www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com / 36 Predictions for Native Advertising 2018

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