Described by industry experts Xevio as “one of the most underrated cold acquisition channels in the world,” native ads could be the most effective tool your marketing mix is missing. Perhaps you’ve seen sponsored content in your social feed or recommended articles on your favorite news site, and wondered how this form of advertising works for lead generation? The truth is, native are accessible to all types of brands and businesses globally through traffic sources like Taboola, Outbrain, and more. We’ve teamed up with the experts at Xevio, the leading native ads agency globally, to show you how.
In this article, we demystify native ads, how they work, who should be using them, and how you can optimize your complete funnel by combining the untapped potential of native ads with the powerful landing pages and lead gen forms created with Heyflow – with expert tips and advice from Nadim Kuttab, CEO & Co-Founder of Xevio.
What is native advertising?
Native advertising is paid content that’s designed to match the look and feel of organic content on a webpage or social feed. They differ from other forms of digital advertising because they don’t look like ads in the traditional sense or (if in line with the best practices in this article) doin’t appear to be explicitly selling anything at all. This happens later in the funnel.
Examples of native ads
Even if you’re a native ads newbie, you’ve certainly seen them online. Common types of native advertising can include articles, images, and video content, such as sponsored or ‘recommended’ articles on a blog or news site.
Why use native advertising for lead generation?
Native ads get 50% more views and a 10 times higher engagement rate than traditional display ads, according to Taboola, the leading native ads platform. In a world where consumers are bombarded with advertisements across every platform, ‘ad fatigue’ – when users see so many ads they stop noticing them altogether – is becoming a real hurdle for marketers.
In contrast, native ads allow companies to increase engagement, decrease acquisition costs, and reach those users who typically ignore traditional display advertising. Commonly shown on trusted platforms, like news sites, native ads attract leads with highly relevant content that they’re more likely to click, engage with, and share. This non-disruptive approach improves lead quality and gives a better user experience – win-win!
Native ads and lead generation are a match made in heaven. The low hurdle to convert, coupled with the content-heavy environment means that leads are of higher quality than Meta, but often more affordable and definitely more consistent in both price and volume.
Is native advertising right for my audience?
While native ads work for all types of audiences as they reach a very broad audience pool, they are most successful for B2C offerings with a product that appeals to a large group of users. “Native Ads work best when targeting broad audiences over 30, ideally even closer to 45+,” explains Nadim, which makes them ideal for reaching relatively older audiences than you might on platforms like TikTok, for example.
“Products that appeal to the masses will always be easier to scale than niche products,” because you’ll be paying for impressions that are more relevant to the viewers. With lacking interest targeting, you will often reach broad audiences, making products with a broad appeal cheaper per aquisition. Here’s the approach Nadim recommends:
Use your ads to segment the audience in the native feed, then use a strong funnel to warm up and convert the intent of your audience into action. We have campaigns spending over 50K daily on Taboola without showing signs of audience fatigue – native ads are incredibly effective when done right.
For more on the best use cases for native ads and how to leverage them in your lead gen campaigns, check out Nadim’s in-depth tutorials over at Native Hub.
3 trusted native ad platforms to get you started
Before we get into the inner workings of native ads, here’s a quick rundown of the top platforms out there for this type of advertising.
Taboola. One of the best-established native ad platforms out there, Taboola ads reach 600 million daily active users with access to 22,000+ trusted premium websites. Their partnerships include USA Today, Business Insider, NBC, STRÖER, and CBS News, to name just a few.
Outbrain. According to the company's 2023 report, Outbrain ads unique daily consumers averaged at more than 310 million. Their partnerships include brands like CNN, MSN, Sky News, and The Washington Post.
MGID. A smaller player than Taboola and Outbrain, MGID reaches roughly 27 million unique visitors per day (based on average monthly figures). Their partnerships include International Business Times, MSN, Playmaker, and more.
For expert advice on how to use Taboola, Outbrain, MGID, and other platforms like Baidu MediaGo, check out Native Hub’s Training & Tips guides.
How do native ads work?
Native advertising campaigns are made up of four key elements:
The traffic source. This is a platform that allows you to place your ads on publishers around the world. For example, a recommended article shown to readers on a news website or a sponsored post that appears in their social feed.
The pre-lander / landing Page. This is the preliminary landing page that appears before the product landing page. The pre-lander doesn’t explicitly sell your offer, rather it’s there to educate the reader about what your product can do, and push them through to your lead form for conversion. Using pre-landers correctly can lead to greatly increased lead quality, and keeps the users from the publishers in a content rich environment.
The offer page. When users click through from the landing page, they’re warmed up from reading your content, and should be taken directly to a lead form, like Heyflow, to complete their details or a product page to purchase your product.
How to increase conversions from your native ad campaigns with Heyflow
With Heyflow’s drag-and-drop builder, you can easily create pre-landers, high-converting landing pages, and offer pages for your native advertising campaigns all in one platform. The best part? Your pages can have interactive lead gen forms built in. Our customizable templates and advanced design options make creating and testing your assets easy, so you can save time on design yet deliver excellent brand consistency and a seamless user experience from start to finish.
Here’s how it works: Your chosen native ad platform handles the traffic source. Once you’ve created your native ad, use Heyflow to generate landing pages and offer pages to match – with our conversion-focused interactive forms built in. Creating the best possible user experience in these crucial stages will minimize drop-off rates and help readers turn more paid-for leads into customers.
Even the simplest interactive forms and landing pages built with Heyflow can help you increase conversion rates and the percentage of highly qualified leads your native ads generate. When you’re ready for the next level, you can further customize the user experience with conversion-optimizing features like Conditional logic, which tailors each lead’s journey based on how they interact with your form.
Heyflow is our go-to form builder. It’s fast and simple to use, but can be complex when you need it to be. So far we’ve always managed to squeeze out substantially higher conversion rates with better quality thanks to Heyflow in all areas of our lead generation efforts. 12/10 – it’s hands-down the best tool out there.
How to create effective Heyflow forms and landing pages for native ads
So, how do you build the very best pages and forms for your native ad campaigns? We teamed up with Native Hub to put together our top tips:
Keep your layout simple. Pages should be lean and load fast for all mobile users, even those without a reliable 5g connection.
No navigation bars! This will help to reduce the bounce rate on your landing page and keep leads on a linear path to conversion.
Signpost with subheadings and body text. This helps users skim your content quickly and still understand what the page is about. Content should be easy to digest and not feel like a barrier.
Use gamified CTAs. A quiz built with Heyflow, for example, can give users the choice of selecting a personal attribute that relates to them (and the problem your product solves). Nadim explains that even having users select something simple like their age or region can have a massive impact on CTR, “We’ve seen gamified CTAs increase landing page CTR by up to 100%.”
Keep text to a minimum in your heyflows. The font, design, and buttons should all be simple and easy to read. Less cognitive effort for users = more conversions.
Add trust icons and testimonials below your form. Keep your lead form at the very top of the page as the main focus.
Include a progress bar. This will motivate leads to continue through your form.
Start your heyflow with 1-3 ‘hook’ questions. These should come before you ask for any personal data because by engaging users early in the process, they are more likely to feel invested and share their info when you do.
For more details on these and other practices, check out the courses on Native Hub.
Native ad optimization: How to keep improving your campaigns
The magic of combining native advertising with Heyflow is that when it comes to your landing and offer pages, you can test, improve, and test again – independently of the native ads platform – so you’re constantly finding new ways to convert more of the huge audiences you’re reaching. Like Nadim says, there are always new opportunities to increase your CTR:
Never stop testing. Even when your funnel performs well, always be looking to improve or find the next angle to continue scaling. Using this approach, Native ads can be consistent, at-scale drivers of user acquisition throughout the year.
Dos and don’ts
Don’t upload identical ads with different landing pages to a single campaign. This isn’t effective because your numbers will be different for each publisher and ad. It’s much more effective to split-test your ad post-click with a tracking tool (the Native Hub covers this in detail)
Do divide your traffic post-click. Traffic sources like Taboola prefer large, unified campaigns. Nadim recommends using publisher data or data from your ad tracker to divide your traffic post-click, ie. in the landing page or offer page steps of your funnel. This will help you get the most out of platforms like Taboola while optimizing conversions.
Do duplicate your heyflows and make small tweaks. Designed to simplify split testing, Heyflow lets you duplicate your forms and landing pages so you can make small changes to increase conversions. From design elements and headlines to page structure, form questions, and complexity – it’s easy to drill into the details of what works for every audience.
Don’t splash development bucks on A/B testing. With Heyflow’s native A/B testing feature, anyone on your team can A/B test elements like landing pages, offer pages, and interactive forms within your native ad campaigns. No coding required.
Next steps
Ready to discover what the world’s most underrated cold acquisition channel could do for your business? From setting up your campaigns and creating content to bidding and optimization strategies, Nadim and the experts in the Native Hub will help you get the most from native advertising at every step. Check out their masterclasses, community slack, as well as community boards, and join weekly group consulting sessions when you sign up at Native-Hub.io.
