At it’s core native is a type of advertising designed to match the form and function of the platform it appears. Since it’s start, native advertising has evolved over the last few years. Like all digital media trends, native has some misconceptions that have prevented adoption. It’s time to debunk a some of these myths so they don’t prevent you from scaling native as a channel.

Beyond Sponsored Content

One major misconception about native is that it’s only sponsored content on publisher sites. It’s true scope is much broader. To perform well, native ads need to fit a publisher’s user experience. To find that fit publishers need to have a wide variety of options integrating native.

If you scan your favorite publisher site, you’ll find native formats in all shapes and sizes. Some include:

• “Recommended” or “Related Article” widgets
• In-Feed Ads, such as Yahoo.com post in social media feeds
• In-App Ads, from your favorite iOS and Android applications
• Guest blog posts, sponsored tweets, and many more

In general, most native ad formats are just teasers to drive audiences back to your own content. At Zemanta we’ve found these type of native ad format to be more beneficial. Marketers want to collect insights about content performance and their audience. The only way to collect these insights is to drive audience back to your own content. These insight can give you the authors, titles, and types of content that perform well. You can also learn more about the audience profiles who consume and engage with your content.

Quality Matters

Another misconception is that people don’t want to engage with native advertising. Consumers are always drawn to a great story, regardless if it’s advertisement or not. Great native advertising campaigns are a direct result of a solid content marketing strategy. As long as brands adhere to these fundamentals, the rest will fall into place.