Why are Native Ad Platforms Effective for Affiliate Marketing?
Native is a unique traffic source in reaching users at the point in time when they are consuming content in real-time. Native ads ads reach consumers who are ready to consume ideas. Native traffic is non-interruptive and non-bothersome given the small ad real estate and are mainly driven by CPM ad auctions. You want to generate the highest ad CTR per 1,000 users and pay the lowest CPC to achieve a competitive CPM to enter the ad auction. Major native ad networks such as Taboola and Outbrain provide high volume native traffic.
Typical Native Visitor Journey: When reading through a content page, the visitor will click through a native ad. While reading the content on the native landing page, the visitor will then click on the destination offer page, and then purchase the product or service.
Both Taboola and Outbrain have expanded their technology and platforms. Their goal has been more reach and more scale, and driving higher CPMs by offering more targeted ads and quality ad inventory. Their technology platforms are becoming more AI driven increasing automation across audience targeting, segmentation, bidding, and launching.
Given AI, primary attention should be allocated to Creatives and creating a strong funnel. The funnel should attract visitors and lead them to purchase or buy a product or service or generate a strong interest. The offer page should capture that interest and lead the visitor to the prize. The key is originality, creative ideas, and having strong media buying strategy.
What are The 3 Elements to Ensure Affiliate Marketing Campaign Success, Consistency and Stability?
Native Ads does not scale overnight. There are 3 elements to ensure consistency and stability in Taboola and Outbrain native ad campaigns. These 3 elements help support month over month growth in ad spend.
Ad Context – where and how the ad is running
Content – where you are sending the user to afterwards
Offer – what is being offered to the user who clicks through to the landing page
How to Evaluate an Affiliate Marketing Offer or Campaign for Native Ads?
Evaluate a campaign based on offer and content. Often times there isn’t much control over the offer or the perceived value of the product or deal. When you chose which products to run,
Offer
Evaluate how expensive it is to advertise in a specific market, on a specific device type, in a specific category compared with the actual payout. If the ratio makes sense, chances are that it’s possible to yield profits, based on a sound advertising funnel.
Content
It is difficult to modify the offer page, so the primary focus is content. How to build and generate demand for an offer? Extract value from the offer by identifying problems that the offer solves and then build great original and unique content around the problem, from the introduction to call-to-action. Lastly, create ads based on the content developed.
In summary, look at an offer and work backwards through the content while building 3-4 landing page variations, and then create ad variations in combination with the landing page. The goal is to generate a favorable landing page CTR and conversion rate to maintain profitability and scale conversions.