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Native advertising and affiliate marketing are two of the most valuable marketing strategies available to businesses today. So, why not take the best of both worlds and use them together?
Think about it. Affiliate marketing is all about traffic. It’s about reaching built-in audiences across niche communities, enticing them to click, and delivering high-quality content.
Native advertising isn’t too different, but it takes your affiliate promotional methods even further by delivering more personalized, visually engaging content that matches the surrounding context.
And, it reaches readers at just the right time. It lets you increase your chances of making money and building new audiences.
Sound like a plan?
Here are five ways native advertising can help you drive affiliate marketing success.
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Click here to learn how affiliate marketers are already finding success with Taboola.
1. Increase Your Website Traffic
Native advertising drives an 8.8x higher clickthrough rate (CTR) than traditional display ads. That’s because it’s made to match the form and function of the content around it.
It doesn’t disrupt the user experience. It fits right into it, providing readers with more information that meets their interests.
Many advertisers already appreciate this major benefit of native advertising. Right behind the entire video category (native or not), native ads are one of the biggest factors driving U.S. digital display ad spend in 2021, with native ad spend exceeding $52 billion in 2020.
Affiliate spend, meanwhile, is forecast to reach $9.2 billion by 2022 — a jump from $5.4 billion in 2017.
2. Target Specific Audience Segments
Affiliate marketing can be deployed across niches, such as real estate, finance, or dating.
There are even specific affiliate programs and websites for each community, such as USAA Credit Cards for military members or Buildium for rental property companies.
Native advertising also helps marketers reach target audience segments at scale, especially when done programmatically. And it pays off:
72% of customers only engage with ads personalized to their interests.
That’s why Taboola pulls data from over 1.5 billion readers across our publisher network to help advertisers target people based on their unique demographics, interests, and behaviors.
We also help businesses retarget people who’ve expressed interest in what they offer and need an extra nudge to continue engaging with their brand.
Take mattress company Leesa. This business wanted to reach customers who were in the researching and consideration stage of their journey.
It worked with Taboola to analyze real-time data about audience preferences and run retargeting campaigns to re-engage people who’d visited the Leesa site. By reaching these people with personalized content recommendations, the brand generated thousands of leads and saw a 5.7 times return on ad spend.
3. Promote High-Quality Content
Affiliate marketing is often associated with embedded links in articles or Buy Now buttons.
It takes the user right to a product page, as in this example from Gear Patrol, an affiliate-run review site:
Native advertising, on the other hand, offers a deeper approach. It hooks people with educational or entertaining information — such as an article, video, or landing page – where they can learn more about the world of your brand.
USA Today, for example, provides readers with sponsored videos, blog posts, and landing pages at the end of its articles, giving people an opportunity to keep consuming content instead of jumping right onto a sales page.
4. Engage People at Just the Right Moment
As the human attention span continues to dwindle, it’s critical that brands reach readers in just the right instant.
Enter native advertising, which allows marketers to reach readers in the “moment of next.” This is that moment when they’re done reading an article and ready to engage with something new — be it another article or video.
Native advertising also blends in with the rest of the page. It helps people experience a seamless transition from reading organic content to reading advertised content; plus it reduces the risk that they’ll grow frustrated or click away.
Traditional affiliate marketing, meanwhile, might just place a link in the middle of an article or in an influencer’s social media bio.
Yes, these strategies drive clicks and engagement, but they also disrupt the user experience. Native advertising takes into account the idea that the reader came to the site they’re on to consume content they like.
The best chance you have of keeping them interested is to meet them in that mindset — in that moment of next — and give them more of what they’re looking for.
5. Expand Your Reach Across Premium Publishers
There are many affiliate networks to choose from. While they help you scale your efforts, they can’t always guarantee the highest-quality placements and publisher partnerships.
With native advertising, however, marketers can often handpick their placements — as with BuzzFeed’s sponsored content program — or work with native advertising platforms that have established relationships with premium publishers.
Taboola builds exclusive partnerships with the world’s top publishers, inviting advertisers to expand their audiences by launching native advertising campaigns across these high-traffic sites.
Final Thoughts
Native advertising and affiliate marketing don’t need to stand alone. Used together, they are powerful tools for driving engagement and generating revenue. Especially today as publishers enjoy increased traffic, advertisers should find new ways to diversify their ad operations and reach built-in audiences with personalized content.
Native advertising for affiliate marketers makes sense. It provides a valuable opportunity for businesses to deliver seamless, non-intrusive ad experiences across top publisher sites where audiences are ready to consume new content — including yours.
For more information, check out these additional resources about affiliate marketing:
- Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers
- High Ticket Affiliate Programs
- Affiliate Marketing Income
- Affiliate Marketing Products
To dig in further, use these articles to boost your affiliate marketing efforts in specific niches:
Click here to learn how affiliate marketers are already finding success with Taboola Ads.