Procter & Gamble wants to buy 70% to 75% of its U.S. digital media programmatically by the end of 2014. P&G plans a similar shift of mobile-ad buying to programmatic buying in 2015. Most brand advertisers remain wary of programmatic trading. A survey released [in May 2014] by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research of ANA members, a group dominated by brand advertisers like P&G, found only 28% felt they understood programmatic well enough to use it, while another 10% understood it but still wouldn’t use it.
Source: Procter & Gamble Aims to Buy 70% of Digital Ads Programmatically 6/4/14
An incredible 56.1% of ads on the internet are not seen by humans.
Google has studied paid ad clicks through what we call a search-ad pause analysis, to see what happens when advertisers turn paid search off. We looked at hundreds of paused campaigns to see if the advertisers could make up their lost paid clicks with clicks from regular organic search results. For the most part, they couldn’t: on average, 89% of paid clicks were truly incremental.
Source: Google’s Winning the Zero Moment of Truth 2011
Spending on native ads will reach $7.9 billion this year and grow to $21 billion in 2018, rising from just $4.7 billion in 2013. Social native ads will account for the biggest share of native ad revenue during this time period, but native-style display ads will grow the fastest. Social-native, including Facebook News Feed ads and promoted tweets on Twitter, will draw a majority of native ad revenue between 2013 and 2018. Native display ads, like the splashy native ads on Yahoo’s news pages and apps, will see the fastest ramp-up.
Sponsored content, like some of the paid stories and sections on BuzzFeed and The New York Times (and Business Insider), has also attracted considerable attention. Native ads perform better than traditional display. This is particularly true on mobile. Desktop native click-through rates (CTRs) averaged a respectable 0.15%, while native-mobile ads had CTRs over 1%, according to recent data from Polar Mobile Group and Celtra, respectively. Consumers hold a generally positive attitude toward native advertising, according to survey data, but advertisers and publishers must ensure that ads are relevant and are purchased by trustworthy brands to avoid the risk of any mainstream backlash.
Source: BI Intelligence’s Native Advertising Report 2014
Consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than display ads. 25% more consumers were measured to look at in-feed native ad placements (the most common editorial native ad format) than display ad units. Native ads registered 18% higher lift in purchase intent and 9% lift for brand affinity responses than banner ads. 32% of respondents said the native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend of family member” versus just 19% for display ads.
Source: IPG Media Lab’s Native Advertising Effectiveness Study 2013
More than 851 brands purchased native advertisements in December 2014 on 100 top consumer and B2B websites. In July 2014, 688 brands purchased native advertisements on those same 100 websites – a 24% increase from July to December. Across the entire market, an average of 546 brands begin using native ads each month.