HOW TO DO NATIVE ADVERTISING

25world class examples

The mindset in the advertising world is changing

Sponsored content is getting bigger and bolder. We see more and more eye-popping content that attempts to interact with readers on behalf of brands and publishers.

Some native advertising is large-scale production of target group-oriented content backed up by big budgets. Others are less extravagant, yet no less meaningful.

But what is good native advertising? What separates the sponsored content that makes an impact from its forgettable counterparts?

The good stuff understands what native means to its specific platform. The good stuff mimics its publisher while maintaining the ability to tell its own story . The good stuff manages to provide the audience with real authenticity whether it is based on entertainment or educative qualities. The good stuff, quite simply, is valuable.

In order to make this definition more tangible, we have searched the internet for the very best within the realm of native advertising. This was an instructive journey as it drew a picture of a new mindset among both brands and publishers. The innovators are moving from campaign thinking to focusing on content programs. Long term quality as the undisputed focal point.

The results of our learnings can all be found in this ebook.

We hope you can use some of the brilliant examples of native advertising to inspire your own work.

Happy reading!

1. Cadillac & Saturday Evening Post – The Penalty of Leadership

2. Century 21 & Craigslist – Walter White’s House

3. Citi & LinkedIn – Connect: Professional Women’s Network

4. Cole Haan & Mic – Two Engineers Have Created the Doll EveryYoung Girl Should Be Playing With

5. Game of Thrones & BuzzFeed– How Would You Die In “Game of Thrones”?

6. GE & Quartz – World in Motion

7. GE & Supercompressor – The Lunar Footprint

8. GE & The Guardian – Powering People

9. Lenovo & The Onion – Tough Season

10. Marriott & Medium – Gone

11. Marriott & Reddit – Virtual Travel Experience

12. Marvel & Mashable – Everyday hero or thief? Cyber criminal toaddress 2012 arrest

13. MasterCard & Mashable – Mobile-Minded

14. Microsoft, Esquire & Medium – What I’ve Learned

15. Mountain Dew & Complex – Green Label

16. Netflix & The Atlantic – The Ascent

17. Netflix & The New York Times – Women Inmates

18. Netflix & WIRED – TV Got Better

19. Newcastle & Gawker – We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad asanArticle to Get You to Click It

20. Nike & SB Nation – First & Long

21. OxiClean & PopSugar - Oreo Churros

22. Purina & BuzzFeed – Dear Kitten

23. Quit & Vine – Every 6 Seconds

24. Virgin Atlantic & Fast Company – Brilliant Minds

25. Wells Fargo & Slate – Beatboxing TransformsEducation at Lavelle School for the Blind

Table of content

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Name: The Penalty of Leadership

Type: Advertorial

Brand: Cadillac

Publisher: Saturday Evening Post

Purpose: Help Cadillac maintain their market position in the early 20th century.

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The Penalty of Leadership

This one is an old school example of native advertising.

In 1915, the car manufacturer Cadillac got into trou-ble due to a new and better engine type launched by the competitor, Packard Motors. Cadillac made a comeback model, but honestly – it was absolutely no good. As a result, Cadillac’s strong position as a reliable vehicle was shaken.

The answer to the crisis was found to be one of the world’s first advertorials, an article called The Pen-alty of Leadership. The advertorial was about doing extraordinary things. Cadillac is not mentioned even once. Furthermore, the article was only published once in the American Saturday Evening Post.

Today, it’s still considered one of the most influential ads of all time. The ad helped Cadillac maintain their market position long enough for the engineers to get the products under control once again.

1 Cadillac & Saturday Evening Post – The Penalty of Leadership

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Name: Albuquerque Place waiting for you

Type: Social Media

Brand: Century 21

Publisher: Craigslist

Purpose: Brand promotion of Century 21.

Do you know Walter White? If that doesn’t ring a bell maybe Breaking Bad does?

Walter White is the main character in the award-win-ning series Breaking Bad. The final episode of the fifth and last season had the impressive number of 6.6 million viewers. To take advantage of the buzz, advertisers paid up to $400,000 for a 30-second commercial slot in the season finale. But not every-one had to pay the big bucks in order to utilize the hype. Real estate marketer, Century 21, already had a steady presence on social media, but they suc-ceeded in pulling of an extraordinarily clever digital stunt.

Century 21 & Craigslist

– Walter White’s House

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Walter White’s House

They put a phony ad on Craigslist for Walter White’s house in Albuquerque just hours before the season finale. The ad stated that the house is an “Albuquer-que Place waiting for you” and included lots of inside references to the actual TV show. Hardcore fans soon picked up on the story.

The ad created an online conversation with the fans earning a total reach of over 80 million impressions.

Matt Gentile, director of social media for Century 21, said to AdAge:“In today’s media environment there’s only so many Super Bowls, only so many opportunities to capture the attention and imagination of a mass audience, and Breaking Bad’s season finale was one of those mo-ments. Walter’s house is like its own character on the show ... as the show is coming to an end we felt that the home was going to receive a lot of attention. This show, in particular, represents really exceptional quality and between those two factors it was a good opportu-nity to move forward.”

2Century 21 & Craigslist – Walter White’s House

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Name: Connect: Professional Women’s Network

Type: Sponsored posts on LinkedIn

Brand: Citi

Publisher: LinkedIn

Purpose: Boost Citi’s brand among female professionals.

Let’s not forget the remarkable possibilities that lie in sponsored posts on social media. If you are target-ing professionals, LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates are very interesting. But what is great native advertising on LinkedIn? Here’s an example.

Citi, a banking and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City, launched its ‘Con-nect: Professional Women’s Network’ in May 2012. They did this to boost the brand among female professionals.

3Citi & LinkedIn – Connect: Professional Women’s Network

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Citi & LinkedIn – Connect: Professional Women’s Network

Citi wanted to reach professional women in a unique forum. They wanted to provide content to strength-en women’s financial futures and elevate awareness of the Citi brand.

The bank used polls to generate discussion in the group, and got 30,000 members in the first three months. As of March 6, the discussions in the group, now counting 427.145 followers, are user generated and include videos, news and polls.

Advertising for Citi’s other brands runs alongside the group page.

Citi group managed to create awareness of their brand and reach professional women.The initiative on LinkedIn resulted in over 30,000 members in the first three months and an 18 % week-over-week growth.

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Connect: Professional Woman’s Network

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Name: Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Playing With

Type: Editorial content

Brand: Cole Haan

Publisher: Mic

Agency: Mic’s branded content team

Purpose: Brand promotion of Century 21.

‘Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Playing With’ is the first content piece in the series ‘History Begins Here’ that put the spot-light on young women making an impact on busi-ness. Behind the series is the lifestyle brand, Cole Haan.

The brand itself posted stories from ‘History Begins Here’ on their own blog, but things first really start-ed to happen when the series was extended to a

Cole Haan & Mic - Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Playing With

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content universe on Mic.com, an online publication for primarily millennial readers.

The collaboration between the lifestyle brand Cole Haan and Mic is a great example of a native part-nership done right. After being featured on Mic.com some of the best stories from ‘History Begins Here’ were averaging 30,000 social shares – especially on Facebook.

The reason why we outline ‘Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Play-ing With’ is that the story does exactly what native advertising is supposed to do – the brand stepping aside leaving room for great stories and, at same time, being very honest about the content being sponsored.

Cole Haan & Mic – Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Playing With

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Two Engineers Have Created the Doll Every Young Girl Should Be Playing With

History Begins Here

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Name: How Would You Die In Game of Thrones?

Type: A sponsored quiz

Brand: HBO (Game of Thrones)

Publisher: BuzzFeed

Purpose: Promotion of Season 4 of Game of Thrones on HBO.

Have you watched HBO’s insanely popular series ‘Game of Thrones’? And by insanely popular we mean 8.1 million viewers of the season 5 finale.

A lot of brands can only dream of this kind of en-gagement, and what is more – HBO can also make clever advertising in the right editorial surroundings and with the right tone of voice.

You don’t see many native ads dressed up as quiz-zes. But that is exactly what HBO does with ‘How Would You Die In Game of Thrones?’. The ad is a love child of the popular series and BuzzFeed.

The sender goes by the name of “Game of Thrones – Brand Publisher”, but the quiz looks and works like BuzzFeed’s other interactive features, which are very popular on the site. The ad fits perfectly into the BuzzFeed universe and also received a lot of en-gagement on site.

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How Would You Die In “Game Of Thrones”?

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– How Would You Die In Game of Thrones?

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Name: World in Motion

Type: An external content hub

Brand: GE (General Electric)

Publisher: Quartz

Purpose: Brand familiarity – why and how GE works and impacts the world.

GE has proven to be a big advocate and believer in sponsored content. The American multinational conglomerate has worked with a lot of different pub-lishers including BuzzFeed, The Guardian and The Economist to produce content. Furthermore, the corporation employs an extensive in-house opera-tion.

One of the larger content programs GE has invested in is a content hub by the name ‘World in Motion’. It’s sort of a warehouse for GE’s articles, videos, graphics and social media posts. The hub was launched in May 2015 and consists of 240 pieces of content from 10 regions around the world.

‘World in Motion’ is created by Quartz, a start-up business news site from Atlantic Media, and resides on Quartz’s website where all the different content has its home. Quartz employs about 100 people and ten of them worked on the ‘World in Motion’ project underlining that content is something that GE is not afraid to put money in.

GE & Quartz – World in Motion6

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But why all of this content? According to Jason Hill, GE’s global director of media and content strategy, brand familiarity is an objective. He said to AdAge:

“We have tremendously high brand awareness but not necessarily a deep understanding of what the brand does. The reason why we’ve got into a brand market-ing space is because ours is a story that requires more than an ad. Content helps them explain the technolo-gy behind the logo – why and how GE works and its impact on the world.”

AdAge also reported that ‘World in Motion’ will exist on Quartz’s site at least to the end of 2015 and also take over GE.com for one month. In order to help the promotion of the content hub, large display ads will be used on Quartz.

GE & Quartz – World in Motion

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World in Motion

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Name: The Lunar Footprint

Type: An external sub-site with sponsored content / a native partnership

Brand: GE (General Electric)

Publisher: Supercompressor

Agency: Thrillist Media Group

Purpose: Bring to light the role GE played in the 1969 moon landing, and brand GE as a com-pany with passion for exploration and innovation.

For the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, GE and Thrillist Media Group joined forces and created a whole sub-site on Thrillist’s site for tech and gear, Supercompressor. The sub-site is called ‘The Lunar Footprint’ and presents several pieces of content to explore. You can find click-worthy titles like “10 Reasons Why the Apollo Astronauts Were Certified Bad Asses”, “You Might Be Wearing NASA Tech Right Now” and “11 Things You Didn’t Know About the Apollo Missions”.

GE has been telling a strong brand story for quite some time, but ‘The Lunar Footprint’ shows that the company is able to include a native partnership in their strategy in order to create an even stronger story.

GE & Supercompressor – The Lunar Footprint7

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The one thing missing is clear labeling. On the right side of each article you find an in-feed with live Twitter updates from GE’s profile and also a call to action to like GE’s Facebook site. This, basically, is the only indication that GE sponsors the content.

Thus, more information is needed to make sure that the reader understands that he or she is consuming sponsored content. This is important from both a branding and a legal perspective.

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The Lunar Footprint

GE & Supercompressor – The Lunar Footprint

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Name: Powering People

Type: Sponsored series on news site

Brand: GE (General Electric)

Publisher: The Guardian

Agency: Guardian Australia Brand Partnerships

Purpose: Change people’s perspective on GE.

In a blog post, Leanne Brinkies, Head of Native Advertising at King Content, describes why she thought this specific native piece from GE was good:

“’Powering People’ is a great native execution cre-ated by The Guardian for GE. It is an immersive and informative four-part series that gives a detailed exploration into how technology is transforming Australian communities. There are interesting stories with videos, images and statistics beautifully shot and put together, and they really resonate with The Guardian’s audience. I learnt something new, not only about what is happening in different parts of our country, but also about GE, which changed my perspective on their brand.”

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Powering People

8GE & The Guardian – Powering People

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Name: Tough Season

Type: Sponsored video series

Brand: Lenovo

Publisher: The Onion

Agency: The Onion Labs

Purpose: Continue building recognition of Lenovo among millennials.

If you want to get through to millennials, authentic-ity, self-awareness and a sense of humor is not a bad path to choose. This is what Lenovo seems to have realized with their original web series ‘Tough Season’ that debuted September 2014. The series is created by The Onion Labs (an in-house creative and marketing agency) and season one consists of 13 episodes each lasting approximately five minutes.

‘Tough Season’ is something as fancy as a ‘mock-umentary’ – meaning it is presented in documenta-ry style to create a parody. The first season of the sponsored video series earned more than 13 million views overall – hinting that Lenovo and The Onion did something right.

9Lenovo & The Onion – Tough Season

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In brief, the series is about an ordinary guy, Brad Blevins, and his quest to become the champion of his office’s fantasy football league with his team “Brad’s Awesome Team”. The catch is that there is not that much fantasy about it. The teams have uniforms, stadiums and each episode features NFL players, including Chicago Bears running back Matt Forte, Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck.

If you look at the series through your native advertis-ing glasses, what makes this content really brilliant is that Lenovo isn’t afraid to be humoristic at the expense of the brand name. As described in AdAge:

“In the first episode of season one, for instance, main character Brad Blevins boasts of his mental and visual dexterity while turning over a Lenovo tab-let in his hands. “I’m prepared for roughly 582 differ-ent scenarios on my Lenovion,” he says, mangling the sponsor’s name. “I got a whole crate of these. They’re sponsoring this whole team -- for some reason.”

It is showing that Lenovo has a sense of humor and that they are willing to be made fun of. The result is creating both authenticity and brand awareness. And very important – it is done in a tone of voice that aligns with the audience of The Onion.

Lenovo & The Onion – Tough Season

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Tough Season 1

Tough Season 2

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Name: Gone

Type: A branded magazine

Brand: Marriott International

Publisher: Medium

Agency: Medium with Jamie Pallot as editor-in-chief

Purpose: Branding of Marriott International

The hotel company, Marriott International, has be-gun a wave of new initiatives which include the hotel industry’s first-ever branded Snapchat programming and two development deals with YouTube stars.

The interesting aspect of the new initiatives, if you put on your native advertising glasses, is a hybrid between a digital native ad and a branded magazine called ‘Gone’. It’s a collection of 60 travel stories on Medium sponsored by Marriott. Five of the con-tent pieces are indirectly about Marriott and labeled as published by Marriott. The rest of the content is produced by Medium and identified as “presented by Marriott”.

The success criteria for the content have been measured by time spent with the content rather than page views or clicks.

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Gone

Marriott & Medium – Gone

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Name: Virtual Travel Experience

Type: Sponsored competition and post on Reddit

Brand: Marriott Hotels

Publisher: Reddit

Purpose: Branding of Marriott Hotels

Since its establishment in 1996, The Webby Awards have developed into one of the most prestigious annu-al ceremonies celebrating excellence on the Internet. Guess who won the award for ‘Best Use of Native Advertising’?

Marriott Hotels. The hospitality conglomerate brought home the proverbial bacon with a campaign on Red-dit, which was so sophisticated and futuristic that you better watch your step as we try to explain it.

In the fall of 2014, Marriott Hotels began to promote something they called “Virtual Travel Experience”.

Marriott & Reddit – Virtual Travel Experience

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Aided by some very talented virtual effects com-panies, Marriott Hotels managed to build a simula-tor-kind-of-thing that allowed people to get teleport-ed. Like in Harry Potter. From one place to another. Just. Like. That.

The next thing Marriott Hotels did was to strike up a partnership with Reddit, the popular entertain-ment, social networking AND news website, where it’s usually the community members who create the content.

In this case, however, Marriott Hotels obtained the right to make a sponsored post on Reddit. The gigantic hotel company asked Reddit users to give “sales pitches” in the form of visual and funny con-tent that explained what makes their neighborhoods special. Afterwards, the Reddit community chose the most appealing sales pitch, and the winner was rewarded with a “hometown trip” in the teleporter and a real vacation as well.

In the end, Marriott Hotels achieved almost 200,000 clicks on its contest page and Reddit’s highest ever user-generated content for sponsored posts. And they won an award.

So good job on that one, Marriott.

Marriott & Reddit – Virtual Travel

Experience

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Virtual Travel Experience

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Name: Everyday hero or thief? Cyber criminal to address 2012 arrest

Type: Sponsored post

Brand: Marvel

Publisher: Mashable

Purpose: Promotion of the new Marvel movie Ant Man.

Is that loveable Hollywood man, Paul Rudd, in that picture? Is that him?! Why is he wearing that plate? Why does that plate say Scott Lang? Is that Scott Lang on top of this blog post? Who is Scott Lang? What is this?!

Slow down, slow down; you were right the first time: That is loveable Hollywood man, Paul Rudd, on top of this blog post. But he is in character! As Scott Lang from the Marvel film Ant-Man.

Marvel & Mashable - Everyday hero or thief? Cyber criminal to address 2012 arrest

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In July 2015, the worlds of cinema and native ad-vertising collided and merged, when Marvel Studios posted a slick native ad on Mashable. The spon-sored post imitates, or more accurately parodies, the style of a real crime report with the opening line: In 10 days, the doors of San Quentin prison will release one of its most memorable inmates. The article explains why Scott Lang was locked away and you can definitely read between the lines that he is going to seek revenge against those damn bas-tards that robbed him of his freedom. It’s almost like a movie script! The article includes a video “news report” about Lang’s release.

Overall, it’s a pretty funny piece of native. The sto-rytelling speaks in a very brand specific and unique voice. We applaud that. Fans of the Marvel superhero universe should embrace it and newcomers will get an appealing and efficient introduction to Ant-Man.

However, we’re not completely sold on Mashable’s labeling which says nothing more but “BrandSpeak”. It remains one of the vaguest and least transparent ways a publisher can formulate that the following content is sponsored. It doesn’t even mention the actual sponsor, Marvel Studio.

The final verdict: Good content. Bad labeling.

Marvel & Mashable - Everyday hero or thief? Cyber criminal to address 2012 arrest

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Everyday hero or thief? Cyber criminal to address 2012 arrest

WHiH: Newsfront Top Stories

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Name: Mobile-Minded

Type: A graphic-heavy sponsored article

Brand: MasterCard

Publisher: Mashable

Purpose: Branding of MasterCard.

MasterCard and Mashable joined forces and cre-ated a graphic-heavy article about how we use our mobile devices – “a look at the complex relationship between humans and the devices we hold near and dear”. Of course a native ad, which was baptized ‘Mobile-Minded’.

13MasterCard & Mashable

– Mobile-Minded

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If you search the web for good native ads, ‘Mo-bile-Minded’ will show up several places. For in-stance, in the piece ‘The Best Native Ads of 2014’ Outbrain wrote:

“In fact, for all the content about mobile to hit the web this year, ‘Mobile-Minded’ ranks as one of the most immersive instances.”

And the praise goes on:

“If MasterCard’s goal is to change the perception of its brand as a credit card company to a technology company, more pieces like this can go a long way toward achieving that goal.”

BUT… As Outbrain also mentions in the post, Mas-terCard is a little too self-promoting in the post – a large section in the beginning is focusing on Master-Card’s digital payment system. But in the end, the value of the comprehensive picture of our personal connection to our phones outweighs the touch of self promotion.

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Mobile-Minded

MasterCard & Mashable – Mobile-Minded

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Name: What I’ve Learned

Type: Sponsored content / Native partnership

Brand: Microsoft

Publisher: Esquire & Medium

Agency: Native.ly

Purpose: Branding of Esquire, Medium & Microsoft’s new HP Spectre X360.

‘What I’ve Learned’ is not a new feature – for a long time is has been a popular column written by Esquire. The new thing is the partnership between Esquire, Medium and Microsoft.

In order to bring new life to the series – and “hope-fully make a bit of money along the way” as Es-quire’s editor in chief, David Granger, said to The Wall Street Journal – a new platform was created on Medium. The 10 new animated ‘What I’ve Learned’ pieces were released one week at a time together with ten resurfaced pieces from the original series.

Microsoft, Esquire & Medium

– What I’ve Learned

14Actor: Sigona Viewer

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An interesting detail is that Esquire and Medium split the associated ad revenue, hence it was truly a native partnership. The mediator in this deal was the online ad agency Nativ.ly. Furthermore, the whole thing was sponsored by Microsoft and the new HP Spectre x360.

Thus, besides being great sponsored content (won Best Sponsored Series, Judge’s Choice, at Share-through’s The Native Creatives) it demonstrated a new way of doing native partnerships.

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What I’ve Learned

Microsoft, Esquire & Medium – What I’ve Learned

Actor: Johnny Depp

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Name: Green Label

Type: A content hub on an external website

Brand: Mountain Dew

Publisher: Complex Media

Agency: Complex Media with Justin Tejada as editor-in-chief

Purpose: Branding of Mountain Dew and aligning old content in new hub.

Since 2007, PepsiCo American Beverages has been overseeing several websites and a YouTube-chan-nel – all for the purpose of branding Mountain Dew, one of PepsiCo’s biggest soft-drink brands which, just like Complex, is aimed primarily towards young men. In order to align the old content, PepsiCo decided in 2013 to work with Complex to create a sponsored-content initiative. The result was the new website ‘Green Label’ – a content hub that focus-es on fashion, music and sports for a young male audience.

15Mountain Dew & Complex – Green Label

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PepsiCo and Complex Media worked together on the creation and production of content for the site and with Justin Tejada, who formerly worked for Time Inc. Magazine, Sports Illustrated Kids, as edi-tor-in-chief.

The layout of the website plays with the same Mountain Dew’s green colors and in the corner of the site you find the labeling in the form of “A Moun-tain Dew Venture”.

Complex also has an important point of view in terms of the content creation. Rich Antoniello, chief executive at Complex Media, said to The New York Times:

“If authenticity and credibility are not paramount, the branded content will be dismissed by its intended audience, and the result will be the sponsor’s failing to achieve its goal to have a deep conversation on a consistent basis with the consumer.”

Mountain Dew & Complex

– Green Label

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Green Label

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Name: The Ascent

Type: A sponsored article

Brand: Netflix

Publisher: The Atlantic

Agency: The Atlantic’s in-house creative marketing group, Re:think www.twitter.com/atlan-ticrethink

Purpose: Promote the third season of House of Cards

Move in closer, this is a member of the native ad-vertising super league.

In March 2015, Netflix paid The Atlantic and their in-house creative marketing group, Re:think, an un-disclosed sum to create a lengthy, reported article with interactive charts and a video exploring the dynamic between certain U.S. presidents and their wives. The ad included the fictitious couple in the Netflix original series House of Cards. The article, called ‘The Ascent’, is a native ad and works as a promotion of the third season of House of Cards.

Sam Rosen, VP of Marketing for the Atlantic, said to Digiday that the goal was to increase loyalty with existing viewers in addition to attracting new ones: “By aligning ‘House of Cards’ with great content that people love, we’re not just encouraging peo-ple to watch a show, we’re also helping to build their relationships with [main characters] Frank and Claire Underwood as characters and thus, ‘House of Cards’ and Netflix more broadly.”

In July 2015, ‘The Ascent’ won ‘Best Sponsored Content Editorial’ (both Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice!) in The Native Creatives, Sharethrough’s native advertising award.

Netflix & The Atlantic – The Ascent

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Name: Women Inmates

Type: A sponsored interactive article

Brand: Netflix

Publisher: The New York Times

Agency: The Times’ department in charge of creating content for brands, T Brand Studio

Purpose: Promote the Netflix series Orange is the New Black

‘Woman Inmates’ was one of the most talked about native ads in 2014 – and surprisingly was given praise from – no, we are not lying – journalists.

The ad was featured on The New York Times’ web-site in June 2014 and examined the US prison sys-tem for women. The ad promoted the Netflix orig-inal series ‘Orange is the New Black’, but it never told the reader to watch the show. Instead it delves deep into the topic of imprisoned women. The content piece consisted of video interviews with women inmates, experts in the US prison system, charts, infographics and an in-depth article on why the current prison system needs to be reformed to meet the needs of women inmates.

The content was both authentic and credible in The New York Times’ environment, which was reflected in numbers. In terms of generated traffic, ‘Women In-mates’ ranked in The NYT’s’ top 1,000 articles among more than 67,000 pieces published in 2014 and got more than 145,000 impressions.

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Women Inmates

17Netflix & The New York Times

– Women Inmates

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Name: TV Got Better

Type: A sponsored interactive article

Brand: Netflix

Agency: The Advertising Department of WIRED

Purpose: Focus on how technology is changing television in order to promote Netflix.

Netflix’s first foray into the realm of native advertis-ing was taken in May of 2014 when an ad – ‘TV Got Better’ – appeared on wired.com. The ad is written by Anthropologist and Culture Expert, Grant Mc-Cracken and covers the future of TV and how tech-nology is changing advertising. It’s clearly labeled as sponsored content, and the ad has also been applauded for its omission of disrupting banner ad units.

It’s a great example of branded in-depth, interactive content done right. As you scroll down the single page, you are presented with stats, a video interview with the producer of ‘Arrested Development’, Mitch Hurwitz, a real-time reader survey, a timeline of TV history, and audio commentary.

Even though, Netflix is mentioned at the end of the article, this is almost unnecessary, because, as a reader, you already have Netflix and similar providers at the top of your mind. Meaning, that the ad has done its job.

The ad has since been compared to The New York Times’ editorial feature ‘Snow Fall’.

Netflix & WIRED – TV Got Better

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TV Got Better

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Name: We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad as an Article to Get You to Click It

Type: A sponsored interactive article

Brand: Newcastle Brown Ale

Publisher: Gawker

Agency: Studio@Gawker

Purpose: Raise brand awareness in connection with Super Bowl.

The native ad with the very blunt headline ‘We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad as an Article to Get You to Click it’ was made to promote Newcastle Brown Ale’s site ‘If we made it’. On the site they show outlines of the craziest commercials they could ever make.

The ad on Gawker is, how should we put it, very forthright in its messaging, but that is actually what makes it so good.

Newcastle & Gawker – We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad as an Article to Get You to Click It

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With a deadpan humor the author of the story keeps the tone of voice perfectly aligned with Newcastle’s own. The author writes:

“As someone being paid to write this, I have to say that it’s the greatest ad ever, mostly because New-castle asked me to use those exact words. Is it the greatest ad I’ve ever been paid to call the greatest ad ever? Yes.”

Too much? Apparently not for Gawker’s and New-castle Brown Ale’s respective audiences. And the interesting thing is that by exhibiting extreme self-awareness, the ad manages to question the entire native advertising format. A debate that is always worth having.

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We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad as an Article to Get You to Click It

If we made it

Newcastle & Gawker – We’ve Disguised This Newcastle Ad as an Article to Get You to Click It

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Name: First & Long

Type: A sponsored section on an external website

Brand: Nike

Publisher: SB Nation

Agency: Vox Creative

Purpose: Achieve brand awareness.

It’s not that Nike desperately needs brand awareness per se. But the fact that they do native advertising anyway is maybe an example of why The Swoosh is among the world’s most famous sports brands. They know when it’s time to try new methods.

In a sponsored section on American sports network SB Nation, six NFL athletes are featured. The site is called ‘First & Long’. The storyline behind the site almost reads like the script from a Hollywood movie:

“Every NFL player got their start in high school.

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Some were mega-stars, some had just discovered the game. All of them found success. Now, six of them are going back to crash their schools to see if they can find the next great NFL player in their own backyard.”

On the site you can find six short videos where each of the football players gives a pep talk designed to encourage young athletes to keep pushing them-selves.

For even more value, users can sign up for a “pep talk” in the form of a text from one of the six NFL players.

The labeling is clear, the design is true to both SB Nation and Nike, and the content is entertaining and perhaps even educative.

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First & Long

Nike & SB Nation – First & Long

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Name: Oreo Churros

Type: A sponsored video on Facebook

Brand: OxiClean

Publisher: PopSugar

Agency: Vox Creative

Purpose: Branding of Oxiclean’s Dishwasher Detergent. awareness.

Oreo Churros! Mmm … the combination of those two words creates rainbows and unicorns in one’s mind. No wonder this native video won ‘Best Spon-sored Video - People’s Choice’ in The Native Cre-atives, Sharethrough’s native advertising award. The video is published by PopSugar, a media and technology company for women, and sponsored by Oxiclean, a line of household cleaners.

In the five-minute long video, PopSugar’s Brandi Milloy walks the audience through the recipe of Oreo Churros. And OxiClean really got it right by choosing PopSugar and the cookie angle – it seemed to be a sweet spot for their audience. When this was writ-ten, the video had received 88,386 likes, 263,435 shares and 8,555,342 million views – on PopSugar’s Facebook page alone!

21OxiClean & PopSugar – Oreo Churros

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Also, you don’t get the “advertising nausea” while watching the video – it really feels like well-pro-duced, valuable content. Although at the end of the video, Brandi mentions that the “best part” is: “... no clean up, now I can just put everything into the dish-washer. No rinsing or scrubbing required, Oxiclean Dishwasher Detergent tackles it all, so I get time to enjoy the sweeter things in life – like Oreo Churros.” It almost ventures into the territory of stereotypical cleaning advertisements, but it remains credible, be-cause it’s done with a smile and remains true to the format and publisher.

Furthermore, at the beginning of the video we get a distinctive “Presented by OxiClean - Dishwasher Detergent”. Oreos AND clear labeling, yay!

OxiClean & PopSugar – Oreo Churros

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Oreo Churros

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Name: Dear Kitten

Type: A sponsored video on YouTube

Brand: Purina

Publisher: BuzzFeed

Agency: BuzzFeed Motion Pictures

Purpose: Branding of Purina and their cat food ‘Friskies’.

“Dear Kitten. Since I have hissed at you the custom-ary 437 times, it is now my duty as the head of the household to – begrudgingly – welcome you.”

This is how a viral video starts – and proves that cats still rule the internet. With the mesmerizing voice of BuzzFeed’s Ze Frank in your ears, you follow a letter from an older cat to a younger kitten that moved in with him. The older cat gives lots of great cat advice such as hiding from the dreadful “va-coom” (if you have a cat, you know their eternal fear of vacuum cleaners) and – of course – eating delicious food from Friskies.

This sponsored video, ‘Dear Kitten’, is created by the cat food company Purina and BuzzFeed and quickly went viral after the release gaining over 10 million views. At the time of writing, the video has been seen 23,380,492 times on YouTube (that’s a whole lot of potential cat food buyers!…).

It’s a first class example of how users don’t care if something is advertising as long as it’s entertaining.

Purina & BuzzFeed – Dear Kitten

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Dear Kitten

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Name: Every 6 Seconds

Type: Sponsored videos on Vine

Brand: QUIT

Publisher: Vine

Agency: BuzzFeed Motion Pictures

Purpose: To get some of Austra-lia’s 2.8 million smokers to quit.

Did you know, that every 6 seconds one person dies due to tobacco? That is a terrifyingly high number, right…? And that’s also why the organization QUIT, whose mission is to reduce suffering and death from smoking related diseases, needed to use this fact to shock smokers into giving up their harmful habit.

Do you know another thing that happens every 6 seconds? A Vine video loops. Thus, QUIT launched six-second anti-smoking video clips on Vine. Three Vines were made, each showing how often or how many people smoking kills. The short and simple Vine format was perfect in order to present the hard-hitting “Every 6 Seconds” fact.

The campaign was launched in Melbourne with the objective to get some of Australia’s 2.8 million smok-ers to quit.

Within the first 3 weeks the Vine campaign generat-ed 142,000 vine likes, 73,000 re-vines, 11,300 vine followers and 19,000 tweet mentions.

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Every 6 Seconds

23QUIT & Vine – Every 6 Seconds

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Name: Brilliant Minds

Type: Sponsored videos

Brand: Virgin Atlantic

Publisher: Fast Company

Purpose: Brand Virgin Atlantic targeting the business traveler market.

In April 2014, the airline company Virgin Atlantic and the business media platform Fast Company launched a series of two-minute videos called ‘Bril-liant Minds’. In the videos you get up-close-and-per-sonal with members of Fast Company’s 1000 most creative people who all operate around the globe to reinvent business and the culture of entrepreneur-ship.

It’s filmed in the Virgin Atlantic Business Lounges and aimed at the business traveler market. Overall it seems to be a perfect combination of brand relevant surroundings, interesting content, the right audience and a respected website. Also, there is no doubt that Virgin Atlantic is the sender, which makes the product completely transparent.

Virgin Atlantic & Fast Company – Brilliant Minds

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Brilliant Minds

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Name: Beatboxing Transforms Education at Lavelle School for the Blind

Type: A sponsored interactive article

Brand: Wells Fargo Bank

Publisher: Slate

Aganecy: Slate’s department for branded content marketing, SlateCustom

Purpose: To show that Wells Fargo celebrates the nonprofits and communities the company supports in the advertising cam-paign ‘Small is Huge’

What do you get if you combine visually impaired people, beatboxing and native advertising? A great piece of content, that is what you get! The online news and culture site, Slate, partnered with Fargo Wells Bank in making a content piece featuring stu-dents from Lavelle School for the Blind and Visually Impaired who attend B.E.A.T (NYC’s music and beatboxing class).

The ad was part of a campaign called ‘Small Is Huge’ that wanted to show how our lives can be affected by even the tiniest moments and decisions. The outcome was an authentic piece of content, which included audio commentary from teachers and videos with students playing instruments or beatboxing.

Wells Fargo & Slate – Beatboxing Transforms Education at Lavelle School for the Blind

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Beatboxing Transforms Education at Lavelle School for the Blind

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What we doThe Native Advertising Institute is dedicated to helping marketers become successful with native advertising.

Whether you are a die-hard expert or just getting started with native advertising this is where you find the insights and tools you need to elevate your game. The Native Advertising Institute is dedicated to providing you with case studies, best practices, how to guides, analysis, industry news, and research.

Our focus is on all things native advertising from newspapers, magazines and broadcast tv, to online media like news sites, blogs, video and social media.

Why we do itYou might say that the Native Advertising Institute is a result of the latest evolvement in advertising.

Within the past 12 months, there has been a dramatic increase in the interest for native advertising. This creates an urgent need to learn more about how to actually make native advertising work, how to avoid the pitfalls, and how to drive maximum results.

Marketers of all industries are looking for ways to get their content out to their peers, engage the audience of the media and to turn that interest into actual business results.Native advertising done right holds fantastic

potential for everyone involved. It is our hope that as many of you as possible will join us on our mission to unleash that potential.

Our storyMany questions may just lead to new ideas and new solutions. And the Native Advertising Institute is the product of just that. We have found that marketing professionals need a place to go to find answers to all their questions about native advertising.

The Native Advertising Institute is founded by Jesper Laursen, the CEO of Brand Movers and Media Movers. The companies specialise in content marketing and journalism, respectively.

Jesper, a passionate content marketing and native advertising entrepreneur and speaker, believes that native advertising done right, holds great potential for getting your message across to the right people, at the right time, and in the right manner.

Currently, his company Brand Movers is hosting the biggest content marketing conference in Scandinavia called Clever Content, they publish the largest magazine in Northern Europe on the subject called Content Marketing Magazine and they work with various brands and media on native advertising projects.

About usthe Native Advertising Institute

Editor - Anders Vinderslev

Writer - Stine Andersen

Art direction - Louisa Hamilton Ferguson & Askan Thomas

Photos - Thinkstock

www.nativeadvertisinginstitute.com

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