There’s a lot of uncertainty among website owners regarding push ads and native ads and which are best suited for their digital marketing strategies. This is because while there’s an increasing popularity surrounding the use of native ads, there’s also a noticeably high volume of push traffic.
Since the dawn of digital display ads, digital advertising has continuously evolved with upgraded creative types, newer ad formats, and all the right technology to support each player in the ad tech industry. Among these innovations, both native ads and push ads have proven effective for engaging users, driving more traffic, and improving all over brand awareness.
In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about both native and push ads to help you decide which is best suited for your next digital ad campaign.
Read on to learn more.
What Are Native Ads?
When we talk about native advertising, we’re talking about the concept of creating an ad type that’s displayed in a seamless manner once a user visits a website. Therefore the content, media, and look of the native ad in question will match the webpage according to the webpage’s layout and parameters.
The goal is to make the ad blend in rather than stand out so that it doesn’t interrupt the user experience. The ad should fit naturally and contextually so it’s relevant to the user and the webpage’s content. In other words, these aren’t the type of ads that will use marketing lingo like ‘purchase’, ‘sign up’, ‘subscribe and save’ and so on.
How Do Native Ads Work?
Native ads work to support online advertising while offering similar benefits to both publishers and advertisers. On one hand, the publishers that receive a high number of website visitors end up generating more ad revenue since higher numbers of website traffic equates to better reach and higher engagement and conversion rates for the advertisers.
On the other hand and aside from the benefits listed above, advertisers also have a better chance of increasing their brand awareness and lead generation with native ads. Essentially, native ads are an excellent solution for both parties.
What Are Push Ads?
Push ads or, push notifications, are exactly what they sound like — advertisements that appear in the form of web notifications. Unlike native ads, push ads are able to reach audiences beyond websites. They can essentially reach any device with an internet connection, and the user doesn’t have to be browsing a website for them to pop up.
This is what makes push ads unique. They’re also widely used in digital marketing as they offer up most of the control to the user who can choose to accept push notifications or go into their settings to turn them off.
How to Push Ads Work?
Push ads work much differently from all other types of ads because they run on a subscription-based model. Therefore, advertisers are only able to reach users who have subscribed to their website’s push ads services, which prompt users directly from the landing page. As mentioned above, users can adjust their push ad notification preferences by going to the settings on their devices, giving them most of the control.
When a user clicks on the push notification they receive — which crops up directly on their screen without the website being open — they are taken directly to a landing page, product, or services page. This is what typically leads to conversion.
Generally speaking, the websites that have a bigger audience tend to do best with using push notification tools to monetize their traffic as there’s a shared revenue from the push ad conversions.
Comparing Push Ads vs Native Ads
Every website out there is different. Therefore, there will be different target audiences and campaign needs. Finding the best advertising strategy to drive the most brand awareness, engagement and conversions means comparing your options by what you have to gain most from them.
Here’s the breakdown by advantage of each:
The Advantages of Push Ads
- Audience reach: Push ads have the capability of reaching your audience’s devices instantly, even when they’re not presently visiting your website. Unlike other advertising strategies, like email campaigns, push ad notifications won’t end up in the audience’s spam folders or get overpowered by the banner ads on a website.
- Increased engagement: Push ad notifications are specifically used for audience engagement because they’re subscription based. The very format of push ads allows for more visibility without disturbing the user experience as they can be set to appear in various ways on a user’s screen. This is far less intrusive compared to pop-up ads and since they look more like notifications than ads, they receive much higher click and view rates.
- More personalization: Research shows that up to 80% of customers are more likely to engage with a brand’s message or make a purchase decision when they receive more personalized messages. Push ad messages can be personalized by details such as browser type, country, state, platform, and much more. For example, if an international brand wants to send push ad notifications during the holidays but only to their US user base, all the advertisers have to do is segment their US audience and send the push ads. This also helps to reduce ad spend.
- Precise messaging: Push ads are limited in their allotted character count to the push ad title and its description. This means advertisers have to put some effort into writing short and concise messages to attract their audiences and convince them to take meaningful action, however, it’s worth it. For a better perspective, the maximum character count for push ad notifications is 55 characters for both the title and description (the sweet spot is usually between 20 and 55 for best results).
- Visual Elements: With push notifications, advertisers can also use display images and logos in their web push ads that are similar to the visual elements used in native ads or banner ads. As per the push ad format, the visual content that can be used in them is compatible with essentially all operating systems.
- The costs: Push ad advertising is also a cost-effective advertising technique. Affiliate marketers and website owners alike can monetize their push traffic to make additional revenue.
Native Ads Advantages
- User engagement: Native advertisements are placed on website sources that allow your audience to receive your ad content organically. This guarantees higher rates of user engagement, click through rates, and conversions without interrupting the user experience.
- Visual elements: Native ads are extensive in their visual elements. They can contain articles, infographics, video media, images, and much more. You can also customize them further by changing the fonts, colors, image sizes, and so on. Unlike push ad notifications, the images used in native ads are compatible on all devices and platforms. Of course, it’s recommended to use visual elements that are clear and speak directly to your target audience more so than the content on the rest of the web page.
Maximizing Your Next Campaign Using Push Ads Or Native Ads
Whichever ad type you decide to use in your next campaign, the real challenge is optimizing them to get the best results regarding traffic or conversions. Here are a few tips on how to do make the most out of your push ads or native ads:
Define the Purpose of Your Push Ads
One of the most important things you can do as an advertiser when using push ads is to hone in on a specific goal. For example, are you trying to build brand awareness? Drive conversions? Reach a higher ROI?
Once you define the goal of your push ad campaign, you can then move on to curating your content, target audiences, website ad preferences, and more. Without a defined goal, your push ad content will be all over the place and unable to reach the right audience — which means your ads will end up being unaffected since no one will subscribe to them.
Place Your Native Ads Properly
While native ads are meant to fit in seamlessly with the rest of the web page, how you place them will play a critical role in your native ad campaign. Therefore, you need to choose the best position for your native ads according to the website’s overall design.
Native ad placement will also have an affect on your advertising costs since placing them wrong could cause your campaign to tank. Keep in mind that the last thing you want to do is interrupt the user experience, so placement is key to better user engagement and getting the conversions you want.
Don’t Forget to Track Your Ads
Tracking your ads throughout your next campaign will give you important insights into what’s working and what isn’t. You can analyze your previous ads to see what you need to improve on for both native ads and push ads, and with each campaign you’ll get closer to curating the most effective messages for your audience.
Check on the Website’s Traffic
It’s important to ensure that the website or websites you’ll be using in your campaign are legitimate upon choosing them. The success of your native and push ads depend entirely on the number of users that visit the website’s pages, and to check you can use tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, and more.
By checking the websites, you’re guaranteeing that your native ads and push ads will get the positive engagement responses you’re looking for.
Which Ad Type Should You Choose?
You really can’t go wrong with push ad notifications or native ads in your next ad campaign. They both come with a set of advantages and when used correctly, see impressive results. Essentially, the choice comes down to what your current business and campaign goals are.
For example, if you’re trying to create brand awareness, native ads are arguably the better choice whereas push ads are great for encouraging purchase decisions for recurring audience segments. Whichever you choose, just be sure to optimize correctly for the best results.