Like I mentioned, we recently attended the Native Ad Summit hosted by the Local Media Association. It was a great intimate conference that really dug into the weeds of how to create, sell, market, and operate a native advertising strategy.
You can have the best content and design out there, but if you can’t monetize it, it’s not super helpful to your company. So how do you go to market and sell native advertising?
Mari DiChiara, the Director of Digital Sales and Marketing at PhillyMag.com, gave a great talk about her experience selling native advertising. This includes:
- How to introduce native advertising internally and how to manage it
- How to generate more revenue
- Which category of clients you should be targeting
- The top benefits / selling points for native
- Successes and challenges when selling native
Managing Native Advertising Internally
It’s the age old battle every newsroom faces. How do you get the sales staff and editorial staff to work together when it comes to monetizing native advertising?
DiChiara says one of the challenges she faced when beginning to offer native was that the editorial team felt the sales team was walking all over them.
When she asked if the editorial team pushed back at all, they said they didn’t know they were allowed to.
DiChiara now encourages the editorial teams to set boundaries with sales people. She says, “[Sales people] will get away with as much as they can, until they can’t.”
If the native advertising content or design suffers, then everyone is worse off.
To bridge the gap between sales and editorial, DiChiara also suggests having a product manager on staff whose sole job is to oversee the entire native advertising process, including sales, marketing, social media, ad-ops, content, etc.
That helps give an unbiased perspective internally and ensures someone has the best interest of the company as their only goal.
Budget Woes
Newspaper reps have a lot of products to sell that could be seen as competing. Clients have X amount of dollars to spend on advertising that they divide up into print and digital buckets.
So when the rep comes in and asks the client to purchase native advertising, how do they get the client to spend more money with them, instead of just taking money they would have already spent with on print and reallocating it to native?
DiChiara recommends thinking outside of the box and capitalizing on other budgets for native advertising, including events, PR and marketing, instead of just focusing on the advertising budget.
Don’t pull from the budget you’re already getting, be creative. Native advertising has some flexibility, don’t be afraid to use it.
Clients to Focus on, and Who to Avoid
DiChiara says their sales staff sells native advertising across all categories, however there are certain categories that see more success than others. The top categories Philly Mag sees work with native advertising are:
- healthcare (hospital systems)
- travel (CVBs, seasonal events, lesser-known destinations)
- real estate / home
- fashion (store openings, product launches, in-store events)
- weddings
One category that DiChiara and several other speakers recommended shying away from was events. From trial and error, it seems universally agreed that using native advertising to promote events do not deliver on the client’s expectations, unless the event is free.
Selling Points
- Native is a turnkey solution for the advertiser.
- It creates a seamless experience for the reader.
- There are guaranteed results through a minimum number of impressions.
- The advertiser has brand safety. Where they are running and what they are running alongside is controlled.
- The newspaper can tap into editorial expertise in the creation process.
- The newspaper creates content for the advertiser that can be used elsewhere.
- The advertisement never comes down from the site.
Other Successes and Challenges
- Success: Native advertising has generated many repeat clients. That means it’s working!
- Success: This is a great solution to combat declining banner ad performance.
- Challenge: Coming up with new ideas for repeat clients / categories.
- Challenge: Competing with editorial for page views.
- Challenge: Consistent changes and updates are needed.
There’s a lot local media companies have figured out about native advertising, but a universal set of rules and best practices haven’t officially been formed. Hopefully Mari DiChiara’s words of wisdom can help you on your way to creating the best native advertising for your publication.
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