In a recent report, Digiday examines whether native ads are truly performing as well as or better than editorial, as some publishers have claimed.
Chartbeat, which studied the click-through rates of native ads as compared to editorial content, says no: Based on click-through rates, they’re performing “between one-tenth and one-third” as well. And in terms of engagement, Chartbeat concluded that visitors are “twice as likely to leave sponsored content than editorial content without scrolling down the page,” and that “while two-thirds of people engage for 15 seconds or more on a typical article, on native, that drops to one-third.”
“In general, the native stuff has a very short lifespan,” Chartbeat Chief Data Scientist Josh Schwartz told Digiday. “I can probably count on one hand the number of pieces that were native that actually got large amounts of organic traffic. So the onus is on the publishers to drive the traffic. That is in contrast to a typical news outlet – it gets picked up by Google news and Drudge and some social pickup. That’s one of the challenges of scaling it.”
What has been your experience? Are they just doing it wrong?
To read more about the real impact of native ads, visit Digiday.
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