Consumer attention is harder to earn than ever, and audiences are increasingly selective about what they engage with. Formats that can communicate brand value quickly and clearly have a distinct advantage, and native video consistently proves to be one of them.
What Is Native Video Advertising?
Native video advertising refers to video placements designed to integrate naturally within the surrounding content. Rather than interrupting the user experience, native video appears in-feed or alongside editorial content, matching the look and feel of the platform it appears on.
The defining difference is choice. Native video allows audiences to decide whether to engage, scroll past, or return later. This choice leads to more intentional, high-quality attention.
The Shift Toward Video-First Consumption
Audience attention has steadily shifted toward video, particularly on mobile. People are spending a growing share of their time watching video as part of their everyday content consumption. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, video now accounts for approximately 80% of global internet traffic, reflecting just how central video has become to the digital experience.
As a result, marketing strategies that treat video as optional are increasingly misaligned with how people consume content. As audiences gravitate toward visual, in-feed formats, brands that rely solely on static placements risk being overlooked.
Why Video Delivers Higher Engagement
Video performs well because it aligns with how people process information online. It naturally holds attention longer than text or images and allows brands to communicate more within a single moment. Once someone is watching, you have a window to convey nuance, context, and emotion that a headline alone can’t deliver.
This is one reason why marketers continue to invest in video. In 2023, Wyzowl found that 84% of people said a brand’s video influenced their decision to purchase, underscoring video’s effectiveness in driving action.
That doesn’t mean that every video automatically performs. Execution and distribution still matter. When done correctly, video remains one of the most effective formats for creating engagement.
Video also successfully achieves something that text often can’t: it makes brands feel more real.
Whether it’s a spokesperson, a founder, a customer story, or a simple product demo, video adds a human layer to the brand that audiences respond to. In a digital environment filled with repetitive content, human and authentic moments tend to stand out – and build trust.
What This Means for Marketers
If video is how audiences prefer to consume content, how that video shows up matters just as much as the format itself. Video shouldn’t sit on the sidelines as a “nice-to-have.” It should be built into strategy, not just as an awareness tool, but as a way to improve understanding, engagement, and brand recall.
The brands succeeding with video tend to do a few things well:
- They keep the message simple and focused on a single takeaway
- They design for sound-off viewing (captions and on-screen text)
- They invest in distribution as deliberately as production
- They place video in environments where it feels relevant, not disruptive
Delivering Native Video at Scale
For many brands, the challenge isn’t creating video, but placing that video in environments where it can genuinely earn attention.
Dianomi enables brands to distribute native video across its premium publisher network, placing video within editorial environments where audiences are already actively consuming content. Instead of forcing attention, native video appears naturally alongside relevant articles, allowing audiences to choose when and how they engage.
This approach reflects how people engage with content today. .Across the Dianomi network, we see: 3.4x higher VCR on 15-second video compared to industry benchmarks.
Native video works best when the format aligns with real consumption habits and when it appears in the right moments, alongside relevant editorial.
Ready to turn native video engagement into measurable brand impact? Get in touch.
