Native has gone feral, says Pollinate MD Howard Parry-Husband. In the rush to jump on the bandwagon, the noise around native is deafening, but, be warned, in 2015 there's risk attached.
The IAB hosted its annual Foggy Glasses or a Crystal Ball event this morning (5 December), to wrap up the year and put a spotlight on some of the trends and predictions in the digital crystal ball for next year.
Native, unsurprisingly, is a big one. Programmatic, is another, but native programmatic – what of that?
Monique Harris, head of digital commercial strategy at Bauer Media, reckons programmatic and native shouldn't be together at all.
“If you're going to be creating beautiful native content, it's human – it's not going to be bought by machines,” she told the audience of “digital trendsetters”, as the crowd was dubbed by AdNews editor Paul McIntyre in his opening address.
Ciarán Norris, Yahoo!7 head of strategy and integration and former chief digital officer at Mindshare disagreed, however, and opined that it all really depends on what you define as both antive and programmatic.
“There's nothing to say that intelligent targeting and beautiful content can't go together,” he said.
Liam Walsh, vice president of Kenshoo, said that as with all industries, anything that can be automated will be.
Pollinate's Parry-Husband, urged caution for marketers, agencies and publishers around native.
“On native, we've got to be careful. Native has gone feral. Consumers are nowhere near as sophisticated as we think they are. They just need to know something is an ad.
“The seeds of our own demise are in not making it clear what is native, what is an ad [and what is editorial content],” he said.
Norris, who led a research project into native content in his former role at Mindshare, said that the findings showed that, often, people don't even realise there is a brand association in native content, meaning that consumers aren't even getting the brand message.
More from the IAB crystal ball next week.
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Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop me a line at rosiebaker@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day. Need a job? Visit adnewsjobs.com.au.