Creative Ad Campaigns That Don’t Feel Like Ads: The Future of Paid Social Media Content

Even professional marketers can get tired of seeing ads. And when an advertisement is especially in-your-face, most of us will tune out, fast forward, scroll right by, or otherwise find a way to avoid the onslaught. But with a creative type of social media advertising known as native ads, consumers may not even realize they’re seeing an ad until after the intended message has been delivered.

What Are Native Ads?

A native ad is a type of paid advertising that stands apart from the typical banner or display ad because its look, feel, and format integrate seamlessly with the surrounding content. By design, native ads often do not appear to be promotional content at first glance. To prevent consumers from being misled, native ads are required to display a (sometimes subtle) marker such as “Recommended by …,” “Suggested post,” or “Sponsored.”

In addition to providing a creative way for your brand to overcome ad fatigue, native ads offer an effective avenue for reaching and motivating online consumers. According to content-discovery platform Outbrain, native ads deliver 53% more consumer views than display ads, and they raise consumers’ purchase intent by nearly 20%.

Native advertising appears in a range of places online, from the search engines results page (SERP) to a news site’s recommended content section. However, these creative ads are particularly well-suited for social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. 

How To Create a Native Ad That Succeeds on Social Media

The secret to native ads that succeed on social media? They shouldn’t feel like ads, which means brands and marketers must get creative. When designing a native ad campaign, you should consider several key factors, including seamlessness, authenticity, emotional connection, and value. Here’s a deeper dive into how your brand can create native social media ads that don’t feel like ads:

Prioritize With Consistency in Design and Copy

The creative social media ad becomes a native ad when it integrates seamlessly into the social feed where it lands. Whether you’re placing your native ad on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or any other social platform, focus on visual and contextual consistency to avoid interrupting the user experience. Every element of a native ad—from the image or graphic to the caption or other copy—should conform with those of the other posts in the feed where it will run. This will help create an organic look so consumers don’t immediately perceive your content as a promotion.

Create an Emotional Connection With Data and Storytelling

Taking a sales-focused approach with your native ad’s content will quickly tip consumers off to your tactics. Instead, make it personal. Leverage your brand’s data about its ideal audience to target your native ad so it reaches the right consumers based on their demographics, interests, or other key factors. Then, find creative ways to align the ad’s content with what will resonate with these specific audiences. Use a conversational tone to tell an interest-grabbing anecdote that holds consumers’ attention. Highlighting consumer success stories, explaining your brand’s background or distinctive traits, or sharing funny or relatable moments are also effective ways to make promotional content feel more personal and pull viewers in.

Add Authenticity With Influencer Partnerships and UGC

Working with influencers is a powerful tactic for quickly building trust with new audiences that align with your brand’s target market. By using influencer-generated content in native ads, your brand can add authenticity to its social media campaigns without seeming overly sales-y. User-generated content (UGC) is another powerful way to make your brand’s social media ad campaigns feel more trustworthy and relatable—and less like a marketing pitch. Incorporating customer testimonials, product reviews, real-life stories, or other UGC adds authenticity to native ads. If this is your first time working with brand ambassadors or content provided by consumers, an influencer and UGC ad agency can help you identify the right partners and assets to achieve your goals.

Provide Value and Entertainment for Consumers

The most successful native ads provide some sort of real value, such as educating, entertaining, or inspiring your audience. This makes them feel less like advertising to consumers and more like content that is genuinely worthy of their time and attention. You can also consider adding interactive elements to make your native ad stand out in social feeds. Quizzes, polls, games, and puzzles help to capture viewers’ attention and increase engagement.

How To Use Native Advertising on Social Media

Today’s most popular social media platforms offer a range of opportunities for placing native ads, with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn serving as leading examples. You’ll want to start by choosing which platform will provide the best fit for your ad type and intended audience. (Our sister agency Brandon offers helpful guidance on how to select the right social platform for your business goals and media type.)

Once you’ve set up an advertising account with your platform of choice, spend some time digging deeper into its tools and settings to support native ad campaigns. Each social media platform offers ways to optimize your ad’s placement and target audience, and may also provide guidance and tutorials on how to make your ad look like a natural fit. (Alternatively, by working with an ad agency that specializes in social media marketing and UGC, you can let the experts do the heavy lifting for you.)

After your assets have been created and your native ad campaign has been launched, track your results and make changes as needed to optimize your campaign’s performance.

Why Aren’t My Brand’s Native Ads Working?

If your brand’s native ad campaign isn’t hitting its goals, there’s a good chance you’ve made one of these common mistakes:

• Improper targeting
• Conspicuous sales pitches
• A failure to create a fit with the chosen platform
• An inauthentic feel
• A lacking or missing value proposition

If you’ve missed the mark in designing your native ads, don’t worry. One benefit of social media marketing is that you can make adjustments in (almost) real time. By updating your native ads, their content, or your campaign strategy to address errors impacting their performance, you may be able to turn your campaign around.

Go Native With Help From the Pros at Joybyte

Ready to partner with an ad agency that specializes in social media marketing, native advertising, fostering UGC creation, and putting it all to work to boost your brand? With proven success creating social media marketing content that feels more like conversations than promotional pitches, the team of experts at Joybyte can make your brand’s next native ad campaign easy and effective. Book a call with us today to learn all the ways we can help your brand leverage native advertising to achieve more marketing momentum.