Native Advertising
My first project in CarWale was to increase the quality and the number of native advertisements. Over the years we came up with dozens of new native ads that performed 200% better than brand ads. Monetized most of those ads which not only led to increased revenue but also improved user experience.
Year : 2016-2018 Company : CarTrade Tech
Specifics : UI/UX, Design Research
Overview
Objective
Native ads are becoming a core strategy for businesses as they provide a non-intrusive approach to advertisements on online products and publishers. Different advertisers have a different approach in context to native advertisements which is one of the USP of native ads, as it camouflages itself on web pages.
My objective was to find ways of executing native ads that would work best on CarWale/BikeWale, based on the tendency of users and their surfing patterns on the product.
User Research
Behavioural Patterns
Publishers and advertisers alike have for years sought solutions to Web consumers' tendency to learn how to recognize online advertising and then summarily avoid it or skip it.
There are several factors that result in users intuitively identifying ads while browsing, the research helped me identify and improvise on those elements that are part of an Ad.
Prominent disclosure or discreet?
Current forms of native advertising can be considered in terms of their secrecy: how aware a consumer is of a native advertisement's source and intent. Based on existing research, we argue that less secretive native advertising will be more successful in the long run, and illustrate this using several cases.
✅ Prominent
❌ Discreet
Studies find that even when advertising cues such as disclosure labels and brand presence are prominently located, consumers are less likely to recognize the advertising nature of narrative native ads when compared to informational native ads.
Lower levels of advertising recognition are associated with increased perceptions of manipulative intentions by the advertiser, which has a negative influence on consumers' attitudes toward the ad. The findings suggest that native ads that clearly communicate their advertising nature through cues such as an informational execution, high brand presence, and prominent disclosure labeling are more effective than a narrative execution style.
Source: (Jamie L. Grigsby, Hillary N. Mellema)
Brand logo
Users rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences, which is one of the factors how users tend to recognize an online Ad and then summarily avoid it or skip it.
✅ Perceived as less biased
❌ Intuitively skipped
The results show that while logo presence and visual prominence increase the odds of recognition, logo presence also increases misperception of the disclosure label as a stand-alone display advertisement. Recognition of the article as advertising led to decreased perceptions of article quality, attitude toward the sponsor, and intent to share the article.
Placement & Interface
Ads are intrusive in a user's experience while browsing, and there are several factors that make an Ad intrusive and obtrusive for a user.
A well-placed Ad increases the quality of the leads generated and also doesn't hamper the user experience which makes its a win-win for the buyers and the consumers
Call to Action
A native Ad communicates with the user about a certain product or service in a natural way with a language and a tone that the user is familiar with. Once the communication is done the user might want to know more about the product or ignore it.
When the user makes up his mind to click on the Ad, he should have a clear idea of what would happen when he clicks on the Ad, if a user is unclear about the next step he might now click on the Ad.
✅ On point, increases quality leads
❌ Vague, generates less leads
Execution
Design
If implemented using the product guidelines, Native ads can create a great user experience. A high-quality design is also important for making your inventory appealing to advertisers. However, designing a high-quality native ad requires the same attention to detail as the rest of the feed design.
The native ad creates a more cohesive, natural experience by matching the layout of the surrounding content.
We perfected the native style after multiple A/B Testing, finally getting excellent ad performance and a better NPS Score for CarWale and BikeWale. User feedback about excess ads went from top 3rd feedback to below 7th feedback on both platforms.
Below I have presented some of the Native ad designs as I am not allowed to present the latest designs.
