Is your brand over-reliant on social media advertising? If so, you’re not alone –many advertisers fall into this trap, and end up experiencing scale limitations and increasing costs, causing them to look elsewhere to diversify their marketing mix.

That’s where native advertising on the open web comes in. Advertisers have an opportunity to branch out from social walled gardens and launch native ads across top publisher sites — tapping into a vast network of engaged audiences who are ready to consume new content. Native ads are proven to boost mid-funnel KPIs and outperform social media ads across key metrics like favourability, brand awareness, and consideration.

If you're just getting started with native ads, you don't have to start from scratch. You can take these steps to transform your social ads into winning native ad campaigns.

1. Shorten ad copy for native channels

Native ads are designed to match their surrounding content. So when you’re building native ads for premium placements across publisher sites, take a more editorial approach to your copy with these tips:

●      Keep headlines short. Keep your ad titles to 40-50 characters, 60 at most.

●      Include actionable words. Grab readers’ attention with bold terms that stop them mid-scroll.

●      Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion. Leverage this tool to automatically customise headlines based on each user’s location or device type.

2. Simplify ad images

Native ad images shouldn’t be as busy — or even quite as polished or glossy — as social ad images. Instead, you can grab user attention and simplify your social ad visuals with these best practices:

●      Remove text. Keep the focus on a specific person or product, and save the text for your headline and CTA.

●      Include UGC. Leverage authentic, user-generated content (UGC) for a more real and relatable look.

●      Experiment with motion ads. Find the sweet spot between static images and videos with short, GIF-like motion ads.

3. Optimise video creatives

It might be tempting to just copy-and-paste your videos from social media to the open web. But remember that you’re reaching audiences in much different contexts on publisher sites. To best engage them, try implementing these post-production strategies:

●      Display your logo. Build brand association and recognition by making your logo visible throughout each video.

●      Include subtitles. If you’re reaching someone who’s reading an article or blog, they might not have their sound on. Add captions so you can still get your message across without audio.

●      Keep movements subtle. Avoid flash and rapid movements so your videos don’t get confused for display or banner ads.

4. Target the right audiences

Whether you want to cast a wide net or hone in on a specific group of users, it’s easy to target the right audiences across the vast open web. For example, you might use your native ads to reach:

●      Marketplace audiences. Target users based on certain demographics, interests, and behaviors.

●      Contextual audiences. Reach people with ads that match the content they’re already consuming.

●      Retargeted audiences. Reach people who’ve already engaged with your content but need an extra push before they convert.

5. Measure and enhance results

As on any other advertising channel, it’s important to take a data-driven approach to building your native ads. So be sure to gather comprehensive, real-time reports from your native campaigns. The more you learn who your audiences are and what they respond to, the more you can optimise your ads to improve performance, meet your business goals, and increase ROI.

Tap into the power of native advertising

Building your first native ad doesn’t have to be a struggle. If you already have a cache of social campaigns to work with, it’s easy to simply adapt those creatives for the open web – and Taboola's in-house creative agency, The Creative Shop, can help you do this.

Taboola is the world's leading native advertising platform, helping 12,000+ advertisers reach over 600M daily active users across exclusive placements on top publisher sites such as The Independent, USA Today and Yahoo, plus a premium in-app experience with ads on Apple News.

Find the Taboola team at MAD//Fest (2-4 July) and would be happy to work with you to adapt your existing ads for optimal performance on native.