Today we’re joined by Maciek Wiktorowski, VP of Product Management, to learn all about the advantages to native advertising. We’re excited to share some exciting updates to the Smaato Platform, which are driving value for demand partners and helping publishers improve their monetization strategies.
We’ve been supporting Native for a long time, but we’re excited about some recent changes to our platform that make it even easier to monetize your native inventory. Now, Native Video and Native Rich Media can be bought directly through our SDK, offering a better value for our demand partners, and more efficiency for our publishers.
What are the advantages of Native Video and Native Rich Media?
Consumers’ engagement isn’t forced and the ads aren’t disruptive, they provide the same experience as any other piece of content on the website/app. From the brand perspective it is a big opportunity to connect with users in a natural, engaging way. Native ad spending in the US, for example, is expected to reach $83.4 billion in 2022, according to eMarketer, which clearly illustrates the value marketers place in it.
On the Smaato platform, eCPMs for Native Video can be more than double that of outstream video.1
Like other native ad formats, native video and native rich media blend naturally into the content of the app, creating a positive user experience. Native videos and native rich media appear like organic content, which helps brand perception for the publisher, and drives up engagement for the marketer. Ad spend with this format continues to increase. In fact, in the US alone, eMarketer predicts $30.88 Billion will be spent on native video ads by 2023:
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For the publishers, native video (and/or native rich media placements) offer a chance to get higher CPMs for their inventory, as providing a better non-distracting way to engage with the consumers is obviously valued higher by the market.
What’s new with these formats on the Smaato platform?
While we did previously have some native video support, it was limited to a few integrations. Now, the native video format is enabled across the board, including for Smaato’s NextGen SDK, API, and E2E connections that have native inventory and support native video.
Smaato has come a long way since its foundation in 2005. Originally being an in-app SPP to a completely omnichannel advertising platform, also supporting WEB, CTV and OTT channels. We continue to evolve and strengthen our platform, and are excited that Native video formats are now supported across the board and on all channels.
What are you most excited about for these new changes? What does this mean for publishers/marketers?
Being a marketplace means we connect demand and supply, creating an opportunity to transact and exchange value. In this case: best-in-class inventory with unique, world-wide demand. Native video is a great opportunity to provide a high-value inventory, being browsed by engaged users, which helps drive brand interactions. Brands can leverage consumer’s engagement into increasing their performance KPIs, such as CTRs, Video Completion Rate and Viewability Rate. As a result, brands can drive upper-funnel metrics for their sales.
So, in short, publishers get to offer a high-value placement, and marketers get a big impact, which means higher eCPMs for publishers, and better KPIs for marketers.
Also, it’s important to note that consumers’ usage patterns have changed in the last couple of years. More and more, consumers are watching short and long-form content on their phones. In fact, 82% of internet users favor mobile for short videos, Short forms help to engage the users so they stay around to finish the content. The shifts in usage patterns are causing the shifts in offerings. Smaato is more than happy to be a part of that switch, which is already visible in-market formulating the expectations for native video formats taking over media planning positions from pre-roll videos, as better performing formats.
Getting Started
It’s easy to get started with native video and native rich media formats. For publishers, simply enable and configure the format on your account, and you can begin monetizing this ad space.
Marketers, DSPs, and advertisers, there is no special action required; you can already enjoy access to these additional formats.
As always, our client partner managers are available to answer any questions you may have.
References
- 1Smaato Internal Data
