Can Native Solve Your Chrome Ad Blocking Woes? It depends….

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Ready or not, Google Chrome’s ad-blocker is going live on February 15.  For most publishers, this will come as no surprise. In fact, I would venture that many publishers are way ahead of Google in rethinking how to better balance their ad strategy with the user’s expectations and experience.
At Dianomi, we spend a lot of time thinking about the quid pro quo between the user and the publisher, and the principles behind the Coalition for Better Ads are the same tenants that we run our business by: the more value an ad brings to the reader, the more value an ad is to the publisher and brand.
There is little argument that native advertisements bring mutual value to the reader, brand and publisher, as numerous studies have found. For example, according to IPG Medialabs, consumers look at native ads 52 percent more frequently than banner ads.  Certainly, in light of the Chrome Ad Blocker, many publishers and brands are looking to native ads as an antidote to the dozen or so ads that will be blocked by Chrome and, more importantly, a way to reinvigorate trust and the value exchange with the reader.   
When done right, native ads bring value all around, to reader, brand and publisher. Take Dianomi client, Kiplinger, which last year reexamined its native ad strategy, reducing the number of content network partners from five to one: Dianomi.  Kiplinger focused on Dianomi because of relevancy and utility.
By putting more relevant content up and taking some of the others away, they found that more people were engaging with their native ad content. By focusing on content links from a single specialized source like Dianomi, Kiplinger is seeing not only better performance from third-party sponsored content but from ad performance overall. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in ad revenue.
Contextual relevance is one of the biggest drivers of performance in advertising.  As soon as you go out of a contextually relevant environment, conversions drop dramatically. Any publisher that is considering native as strategy to address the new ad standards, should take a step back and remember that a lack of relevancy is part of what drove the interruptive experiences now being blocked.  Only when you ad relevancy can you bring out the true value that native has to offer.