As more and more consumers dived into social media as their main source of entertainment and media consumption, marketers dutifully followed. Nonetheless, as they explored how to effectively interact and communicate in the social media space, marketers realized that the traditional banners and pop up videos were no longer fit to do the task. As always, marketers need to step into the shoes of its consumers and understand what it is that they want to get out of it. There a need for an organic and natural element to the way the marketing message is delivered, which gave rise to Native Advertising.
According to Twitter,
“Native ads follow the
form of the user experience and function as natural content. In contrast to banner
and interstitial ad units, native ads are part of the overall app experience.”
Twitter does a great work with incorporating native ads into its platform. With a simple “promoted” tag, the tweets, trending hashtags, and suggested channels are incorporated in the twitter feeds of its users. Moreover third party resources such as MoPub allow marketers to strategically coordinate the time and repetitive cycle of the promoted ads. This further functionalities help ensure that the user experience is not overcrowded with ads. Most importantly, it allows marketers to place content where users are actively playing attention to and providing content that is aimed to enhance the user experience versus diminish it.

Further Readings:
– 12 Examples of Native Ads (And Why They Work)
– Download link of The Native Advertising Playbook
Which many brands have hastily picked up already, but one in particular that I would like to put on the spotlight is HootSuite. In regards to content marketing, HootSuite does a great job in stirring the focus away from directly selling its social media management system, but rather seeks to provide the value that its target consumers are looking for – how to become better social media experts. Of course, HootSuite weaves its product and services into the articles and up-sells its product as an complimentary enabling tool to that tips and insights that the brand provides.
Unilever, has done a great job generating content through crowdsourcing. It’s YouTube channel
Facebook has been working on a new way to advertise to customers in a way that customers want to be engaged with – through an app-like experience! These new format consist of a normal news feed ad that once clicked on, it leads to a personalized blank canvas for marketers to create compelling experiences to customers.