Here’s a short survey:

There are two types of websites employing two different types of ads.

Website A - Has a pop-up ad that keeps jumping up on your browser while you’re navigating through the website.

Website B - Has a visual ad that blends in seamlessly with the website’s user interface and its other content.

Now out of the two, which ad would you click?

9 out of 10 will click the second one simply because it’s less intrusive and doesn’t stop the visitor from consuming other information from the website. And, well - it also doesn’t seem like an ad!

That’s what Native Advertising is all about.

Native ads can accommodate all formats of content such as text, images, and videos, making them the perfect ingredient for affiliate marketing success.

They also offer more visibility and higher purchase intent. According to Outbrain, consumers look at native ads 53% more than display ads.

But the path to affiliate marketing success using native advertising is not really a bed of roses.

And that’s where this blog post can help as it offers you some handy tips to succeed with native ads for affiliate marketing.

How to do Native Advertising Right With Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts?

Here are four battle-tested strategies to do native advertising right in affiliate marketing:

Nail your content

If native advertising is a car, and affiliate marketing is the destination, then the content is the wheels. It is what helps in reaching your destination successfully.

So make sure that your native ad content is well-crafted and suited for affiliate marketing promotions.

The four basic rules to nail your ad content are:

The content should be informational

The content should be non-promotional

The content should be uniform and match other content on the website

The content should be relevant & intriguing to the visitors

Embrace multiple channels

If you want your affiliate marketing efforts to be fruitful, be present on (or at least test out) multiple channels and platforms.

Interestingly, each type of channel has its own type of native advertisements that work really well. For example, in-feed native ads are perfect for social media platforms.

In-app ads, as the name suggests, blend in seamlessly with an app.

And discovery ads are found on websites in the form of sections like ‘recommended for you’ or ‘you might also like.’

Measure and improvise

Nobody can master affiliate marketing and native advertising in one go. It takes time. What you can do as an affiliate marketer is perform A/B tests of your various native ads.

Play around with multiple ad copies, images, and CTAs and find what works and what doesn’t. Measure important metrics like Click Through Rate, Conversion Rate, Return on Investment/Ad Spend, etc. for each of your ads.

Based on the results, pick the option that seems most promising.

Partner with a native advertising platform or network

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Many new affiliate marketers reach out to individual website owners to post their ads. Now, this is highly time-consuming and can burn a lot of man-hours in your affiliate marketing efforts.

Instead, seek help from a native advertising network that has a huge repository of contacts serving different verticals and audiences. They can even help you perfect the aesthetics and copy of your native ads in a way that will appeal to the visitors.

Wrapping Up

Today’s internet consumer is skeptical, savvy, and doesn’t want to constantly be sold to.

Affiliate marketing + native advertising works better for such audiences because it builds credibility in their eyes.

If leveraged correctly, they can effortlessly engage your target customer and get them to purchase the affiliate products you promote in a non-intrusive manner.