Why You Should Be ‘Repurposing’ Your Social Ads For Native – and How to Do It

Recycling is more than just throwing your plastic bottles in the collection bin. Recycling can also be buying second hand furniture, or reusing coffee jars for arts & crafts storage. This is called “repurposing”, and guess what? You can repurpose your advertising and marketing content too, and thereby save precious resources, like time, energy, and money.

Repurposing content is something that we’ve discussed before at Outbrain. If you’ve written a great blog post, why not turn it into a short video or infographic? With a bit of extra effort, you can get much more ‘mileage’ from recycled content; it just needs to be repackaged into a different format, suitable for different audiences and user experiences. 

There’s another, powerful way you can repurpose, and that’s by turning your social media ads into native ads to gain exposure on the open web. It’s such a smart idea, we even wrote a whole guide explaining how to do it. Intrigued? Read on.

Social Ads & Native Ads: Same, But (Very!) Different

Social media ads and native ads have some important similarities. They are composed of the same parts – image, headline, and link (to a landing page, blog, or any other web page). They appear in the user’s feed (in Facebook or Twitter social feeds, or recommended content feeds on the open web). Both social and native ads aim to capture the attention of the viewer and entice them to click through to the advertiser’s website or content. Both ad types work on the CPC model.

If your social media ads are working well for your business, then why not get even more out of them, with little effort, and simply turn them into native ads?

Here are three reasons why you should repurpose your social ads for native, and what to expect if you do:

1. Native ads get enormous reach and perform well

You might already be advertising on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, and even feel quite pleased with your results. However, these social sites are closed networks, and the only people viewing your ads are those already spending time on social media.

Native ads appear on the open web, meaning they are served on websites covering news, entertainment, sports, travel, tech, music, weather, and everything in between. Outbrain ads reach 1 billion monthly users! By reusing your social ads on native channels, you gain massive exposure among a huge chunk of the world’s population whom you may not encounter on social media.

In addition, native ads have very good performance stats, with average 21% higher CTRs than social ads, and 24% more likely to drive purchases. That’s because native ads are highly targeted to audiences when they are already browsing on their favorite sites, meaning they are well primed to engage with your native ad message. Why not leverage this huge, high-intent audience by tweaking your social ads and reusing them for native?

2. Your ad creatives are working – use them to drive even more value

If you’re running social ads, you know how much work goes into creating them. Catchy headlines, attractive images, cute videos, not to mention attention-grabbing landing pages or blog content. After doing this for some time, you’ve probably become quite adept at creating ads. You’ve already invested the resources necessary for producing social ads – why not make them work harder and adapt them for native AND boost your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)?

Remember, native ads are not just like regular display ads and banners. There are lots of different and sophisticated ad types, such as video, carousel, clip ads, and app install ads, so you can adapt just about any social ad to the right native format for all types of campaigns. Check out the full gallery here. 

3. It’s easy – just follow the template

Native ads are very easy to create, and if you have the ad content and image prepared and ready, it is even easier. All you need to do is take your existing social media headlines and images, and tweak them to fit the size specifications and templates of native campaigns. You will still link to the same URL, whether it be a landing page, blog, or product page, so no changes necessary there.

All the details and specs are outlined in our Repurpose for Native guide. Download now, follow the templates, and start re-using your social ads for native within minutes.

Repurpose Your Search and Display Ads Too

Your social ads are working – you’ve already exposed your followers to them. Now it’s time to hit the open web. Repurpose your existing ads for native channels, and stretch their value with more views, clicks, and conversions.

And it’s not just your social ads. The repurposing tactic works great for search and display ads too. In fact, any digital ad that is performing well can be tweaked and leveraged for native channels. Check out the guide and start repurposing your ad creatives for the open web, even today.