A panel of leading industry voices discussed how native advertising could be further integrated in to the marketing mix in an afternoon session on the first day of Ad:Tech 2015 in London.

Method creative director Darren Smith said the key was in “looking for the kernel of truth” in native advertising.

Brand voice was what mattered to Forbes international managing director Charles Yardley. He said the publisher’s platform allowed marketers and advertisers access to the same content management system as journalists and contributors, enabling them to create as much content as they wish for a set fee.

“Their content becomes searchable and discoverable just as a piece of content by a contributor,” he added.

“We take a very structured approach,” said The Economist managing director and publisher Nick Blunden. “We have a separate content solutions team,” he said, elaborating that journalists who work on editorial do not work on content solutions, which he believes is important for transparency.

“We believe the content from content solutions unit is as good as any other content,” Blunden added. He also pointed out that, in the same way marketers may not produce all ads in house, they might trust his content solutions as they have insight in to what the company’s audience wants.

Content integrity

Smith discussed the recent issues suffered by UK newspaper Daily Telegraph, over allegations its commercial relationship with bank brand HSBC compromised the integrity of its content.

“If there is a brand you think your readers enjoy, my view is we all go shopping, you have a shelf space with a number of brands,” Smith said. “We are very comfortable with a number of brands and so I think there is no problem sharing brand equity as long as that is somewhere you feel comfortable.”

CNBC International head of creative solutions EMEA Simon Robbie felt that if a company isn’t offering creativity to a client, it will find someone else who will.

“It’s important to have trusted brands with content that you are effectively hosting for them,” he said, citing the company’s relationship with Picasa. Yardley said the importance lay in how data is used to find brand fit.

Smith felt the platforms offered a very different service to agencies, who look at things very much from a client perspective, where as his company was interested in finding the right way to reach the reader.

“Our role is to service our readers and it so happens we’re quite good at it, we have a large number of readers and [agencies] have a large value to clients,” he added.

Blunden admitted his company has been acting in a similar way for a long time in various forms. “Although a lot has changed, I can’t think of one example over 20 years where we haven’t had an agency working along side us,” he said.

Native ‘addiction’

Yardley said that some content contributors found native “quite addictive”.

“They start competing against each other with views and the ability to connect with our audience,” he said, adding that native now accounted for 35% of Forbes revenue despite not even existing only five years prior.

On the subject of content sites losing their ‘voice’, Yardley said that currently, despite the large revenue, only 3-5% of content on the site was native. “I think that’s a problem I would just love to have.

“I would love to call my boss and say ‘I don’t know how we’re going to handle this many bloggers’.”

Blunden felt the importance lay in maintaining quality instead of focussing on quantity, and putting the user first. “Without the user, the reader, the listener, the viewer, we have nothing to sell,” he added.

“I don’t know if anyone can really answer whether this is just a phase,” said Robbie, speculating that readers are more forgiven when native content appeared in context with the rest of the content.

Smith commented on The Sun’s perceived issues with its paywall, which are starting to be overcome to rebuild the audience.

“It’s all a work in progress,” he said. “We didn’t lose the audience in the first place permanently – they still liked us but they didn’t like our paywall.”

Don’t be scared to try things,” commented Robbie, “and if they don’t work move on to the next thing.”

Blunden concluded that “great content has the ability to connect people”.