Native Advertising Survey: Facebook, Twitter Considered Least Effective

Content Marketing

November 19, 2013 -- A new survey by native advertising exchange Hexagram and Spada gathers input from publishers, brands, and agencies on the use of native advertising, its effectiveness and more.

The survey was carried out over a 10-week period in September 2013 with over 1,000 respondents from the U.S., U.K., and around the world.

DEFINING NATIVE ADVERTISING

Many are confused about what exactly 'native advertising' is. Respondents consider a variety of advertising content to fall under the category, with the most popular definition being ‘sponsored content’ (53%).
 

Definitions of Native Advertising
Definition	% of Respondents
Sponsored content	53%
Featured content	47%
Content “brought to you by…”	45%
Company branded pages	38%
Micro sites	25%
Source: Hexagram, November 2013

WHOSE DRIVING USE

Publishers are the main users of sponsored content, with 62% of publishers currently offering native advertising and another 16% planning to  do so within the year.

Use of the marketing form is growing among brands and agencies -- 41% of brands and 34% of agencies  currently use native advertising; 20% of brands  and 12% of agencies planning to begin using it within the year.

The majority of publishers (84%), agencies (81%), and brands (78%) believe that native advertising adds value for consumers. 

POPULARITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF VARIOUS FORMS RANKED

Blog posts, articles and videos are among the most popular forms of native advertising and considered the most effective.  

Facebook sponsored stories and Twitter sponsored tweets were deemed among the least effective.
 

Native Advertising Format	Most Popular (% of publisher respondents)	Most Effective (% of publisher respondents)
Blog posts	65%	58%
Articles	63%	56%
Facebook	56%	34%
Videos	52%	53%
Tweets	46%	25%
Infographics	35%	31%
Source: Hexagram, November 2013

  WHAT MOTIVATES USE OF NATIVE ADVERTISING
 

Respondents were asked the motivations for using native advertising over more traditional forms of advertising.
 

• Provide a more relevant message (67%)
• Increase consumer engagement (63%)
• Generate awareness or buzz (62%)
• Create word of mouth (48%)
• Combat ‘banner blindness’ (43%)

IDENTIFYING SPONSORED CONTENT FOR THE CONSUMER

The survey asked publishers whether they clearly label native advertising campaigns to distinguish them from editorial content -- 79% state they do.

The most popular way of indicating ad content was ‘Sponsored’ (64%), followed by ‘Brought to you by’ (34%) and/or ‘Featured’ (29%). 

FUTURE USE

The findings show that 85% of publishers believe native  advertising represents a new revenue stream.

Publishers expect native advertising revenues to increase by approximately 10% within a year; Publishers that use native advertising estimate that a mean 20.4% of their revenue currently comes from native ad campaigns and expect that an average of 30.1% of their revenue will come from native ad campaigns in one year. 

About:  The survey was carried out over a 10-week period in September 2013 with over 1,000 respondents from the U.S., U.K., and around the world. The survey invitation was sent multiple times to email distribution lists sourced from Hexagram’s contacts and 35,000  brands, agencies and publishers in September 2013. The process yielded a total of 1013 completed surveys (374 individuals working in publishing, 302 working in advertising or PR agencies, and 337 in marketing/ brand management). The firm states they believe that the survey sample looks similar to the demographics of the publisher, brand, and agency populations overall; however, men (76%) and U.S.-based companies (73%) might be over represented. Respondents come from a range of small to large companies, with the plurality (47%) working in small companies with 1 – 9 employees, 32% working in midsize companies with 10 – 250 employees, and 21% in large companies with over 250 employees.

Source: Hexagram, The State of Native Advertising 2014, accessed Nov. 19, 2013.