The difference between native ads and display ads

Digital marketing has seen a remarkable upgrade from what it used to be years ago. This is largely driven by trends in consumer behaviour, and marketers' response in terms of trying to effectively generate leads and drive more sales.

At a time, display ads (banner ads) were the best way to promote a brand, product, or service, but not anymore.

Now, marketers tend to focus their advertising spend on native ads. So what is the difference between these two advertising approaches?

More importantly, why is native ads a more effective approach than display ads?

In this article, we shall look at the difference between the two in terms of advertising format, performance, and revenue.

Understanding native ads and display ads

Display ads are images, videos or text, that visually appear at the top, side, or bottom of a webpage.

They stand out from the surrounding content and can be seen to be promoting a brand, product, or service. The most common example is banner ads.

On the other hand, native ads are non-disruptive and information-rich content that blends with the content of the site.

The idea is that the ads don't look like ads. To show how effective it is, in a study, it was found that almost 77% of users did not interpret native ads as advertisements.

Native ads can be present as a featured search result that matches with a search result that pops up when people search for particular information, or as sponsored, promoted, or recommended content on a web page or social media feed.

Key differences between native and display ads

1. Advertising format   

Display ads centre around the idea of hard-selling, and consumers hate annoying pop-ups. It may have worked just fine in the early stages but it's much less effective now.

According to reports, 80% of internet users have ad blockers activated on their browsers so they don't get interrupted by those ad pop-ups.

It's not just the ad blockers alone, according to Neil Patel, another reason that makes display ads a less effective advertising strategy is banner blindness — a syndrome that causes users to ignore ads when they're presented in an obvious and overbearing manner.

In contrast, native ads are based on a soft selling approach.

Unlike annoying ads, marketers find a way to get consumers to read and click by offering information they're interested in. As a result, 20-60% of consumers are more likely to click on native ads than banners.

2. Revenue and traffic

There's a big gap between the two when it comes to ad performance and returns. Display ads have a low click-through rate (CTR) of 0.05%. This means that for every 10,000 people that come across your banner, only five people will click. While studies reveal that native ads have a CTR that is eight times higher than that of display ads. They also do better in terms of driving traffic, as they are designed to encourage web users to read or view content they're interested in.

Conclusion

As humans, we are always looking for better ways of doing things. That includes better ways of advertising and selling. Now you've seen the difference between native ads and display ads, and you now know which one is better. That said, you can rest assured that native ads are exactly where you should bank on.