Native Takes the Spotlight at Advertising Week APAC

The second edition of Advertising Week APAC took place at Luna Park in Sydney this past week, drawing in a global gathering of leaders in marketing and communications. With over 75 seminars and workshops focusing on the future of advertising, there was great debate and discussion around storytelling, content, data, brand purpose, and more.

Not only was Outbrain a sponsor of Advertising Week APAC, but we played host to a variety of panels and keynotes to carry the mantle of native advertising being a non-intrusive, powerful channel for performance goals.

Here are some of our highlights from the 4-day event:

Knife Fight In a Native Ad-Box

You know it’s a “Knife Fight in a Native Ad-Box” when you have Outbrain, LinkedIn, Verizon Media and TripleLift on one panel! A huge thanks to Elizabeth Adeniji from Verizon Media, Prue Cox from Linkedin, Penelope Lloyd of TripleLift, for joining our panel with Andrew Burke. Together, we raised our weapon in the battle for attention, with native advertising as the opportunity for marketers to differentiate their experience with consumers.

Some great soundbites around the value of native advertising:

“It’s about understanding the context and mindset of the audience, why they are there, and then adding value to that experience. Whether that be something about tax reform for a small business owner and really giving them value that’s going to help inform them in their decision, or understanding thought leadership around 5G for enterprise telecom clients that’ll help them understand the buying journey they need to go on, it’s a place to build brands within native. Less about disrupting, but actually adding value to the experience people want to have.” – Prue Cox

“When content is cheap and readily available, attention becomes expensive. Brands must focus on getting good at storytelling but work with ‘mathmen’ to make sure their ads are seen and delivered to the right user at the right time. One of the challenges is how to get the creative agencies or creative minds working really well with the mathmen in order to create great experiences that people fall in love with.” – Elizabeth Adeniji

“It’s not just what are the right metrics we should be going after, but what are the metrics that we shouldn’t apply to native. So often we see that display metrics are being set up as targets for a native outcome, and fundamentally that just doesn’t work. Viewability is a great example of that, and we have to go back to what are the important metrics that work, help clients understand it, and then see it perform like we know it does.” – Andrew Burke

Lots of great debate about the issues and opportunities facing our industry! If you missed it, be sure to watch it here!

Native Advertising Mythbusting

We delivered a mythbusting session on some of the greatest native advertising misconceptions. While native’s success has made it an immense competitor versus display – with better performance across essentially every KPI – this multi-billion dollar industry yet remains a mystery to many marketers.

Not anymore, at least for those who tuned in! Here are 4 key facts to take away:

1. Consumers dislike disruptive and intrusive ads, not native ads.
2. Just because an ad is in view doesn’t mean it wins consumer attention. Low viewability placements (like at the bottom of the article) have much higher engagement from consumers and are high-impact. The key is to be in-feed, especially on mobile.
3. Native discovery offers scale as it powers the open web.
4. Your digital assets are easily adaptable to native.

WTF Is Programmatic?

What’s a better way to end Advertising Week than with a great story? Outbrain’s Head of Sales, Yoav Tourel, shared an exciting tale about the power of consumer engagement with native ads. Referencing Peppa Pig, Yoav covers the unique positioning based on a true story by Zemanta, where pull marketing in a programmatic landscape was made possible to benefit viewability, brand safety, and performance goals for marketers. Watch this special performance, right here!

That’s a wrap for Advertising Week APAC. Thanks to all who participated and enjoyed. Stay tuned for more recap posts on the Outbrain blog about the leading digital marketing industry events!