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The Globe and Mail pilots native ad platform to drive mobile revenue

Publications such as The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star are piloting a new native advertising program that makes it easy to deliver sponsored content across smartphone, tablet and desktop Web sites.

For publishers looking to monetize their mobile sites, native advertising provides a way to deliver ads that are integrated into the user experience. These publications are testing a variety of types of native ads on Polar?s new MediaVoice platform, including sponsored stories, sponsored videos, sponsored photo galleries and sponsored outbound content.

?Native ads give marketers/brands a chance to become part of the discussion, which makes them (native ads) more valuable,? said Tony Vlismas, senior director of marketing and sales development at Polar, Toronto.

?We're seeing rates for banners plummet along with their click-through rate,? he said. ?Native ads provide an opportunity for publishers to generate more revenue, give marketers a new platform to talk to their customers and consumers access to new high-quality valuable content.

?Publishers need to keep their audience in mind. Banners aren't doing well because they're intrusive, so it's important that the sponsored content is relevant to their readers.?

Seamless content experiences
Other publishers piloting the native advertising program include Financial Post, St. Joseph Media, Fight Network and Blue Ant Media.

In general, marketers are looking to create stronger user experiences in mobile that go beyond the standard banner ad, which can be easily overlooked on a small mobile screen, as well as interstitials and other formats that take users away from the content they are interested in.

This is one of the reasons why native ads are on the upswing in mobile, as ads are placed seamlessly within the flow of content.

However, native advertising does come with its own potential pitfalls. For example, inline ad content can easily be mistaken for editorial content if it is not properly identified, which can be confusing for consumers.

The MediaVoice platform from Polar, which recently changed its name from Polar Mobile, makes it easy for publishers to present, create, serve and report native advertising experiences across their desktop, tablet and smartphone Web sites. The platform integrates with publishers? existing ad infrastructure, such as DoubleClick.

Better user experiences
The native advertising solution is an extension of Polar?s MediaEverywhere platform, which enables publishers to develop and manage mobile sites and apps. Native advertising was offered as a feature on MediaEverywhere, but interest was strong enough from the market that Polar decided to offer it as a standalone platform.

The MediaVoice platform adapts native ads to a site's existing look and feel, while still giving the publisher control to customize the styling, font, color, shading and any design elements using CSS and HTML. There is also a self-serve Web-based tool used to create and manage native advertising content and a reporting dashboard with real-time analytics on native ads performance.

?The beauty of native ads is that it should adapt to the look and feel around it, so publishers should clearly indicate that it's sponsored content to not confuse it with editorial content,? Mr. Vlismas said.

?One example I use often is when The Atlantic featured a sponsored article for The Church of Scientology on their front page back when sponsored ads were still fairly new,? he said. ?The challenge was that the audiences didn't match, the article wasn't clearly marked and the comments were moderated, overall not the best experience for The Atlantic readers.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York