Native advertising has proven to be one of the best ways of getting your message through a jungle of information and various forms of online content and reaching your target group. This type of advertising includes placement of copies and information, visuals that fit other content on a selected platform in a natural (native) manner. Fit in visual appearance, writing style and everything else, thus winning trust of the selected site audience. It’s important to provide readers with useful information, keep their attention, present new facts of interest. Bearing in mind that human attention at web portals is reduced to mere 3 seconds (thumb attention), we realise the importance of good copywriting, writing of titles and copies with keywords of relevance for a client or a brand, ranking the content at the very top of search results.

It’s also important to write for a specific platform/portal – to know how to approach readers of that media outlet in an appealing fashion.

Example: Telegraf.rs

Portal readers no longer want content (copy, video) consumption be interrupted by annoying ads and have aggressive banners and messages blinking on the side. A rate of users of programs blocking frustrating ads (Ad blocker and Banner Blinder) has been on a constant rise, now standing at 60 percent already, and therefore appealing and informative copy is the only way to get through to your audience. By using an interesting video or infographic, we increase an interaction of readers with a message communicated by a brand/client.  Storytelling is always a winning option.

How to successfully execute a native campaign

One of the most recent campaigns we have executed is for the Hemofarm Foundation and the “Having a coffee with a psychologist“ project. Implemented in the course of April and May, it aimed at raising public awareness regarding the importance of caring for mental health as much as for physical health and highlighting that mental health issues are not a personal weakness, but a health problem that can be resolved adequately if professional assistance is required on time. The project covered various topics, such as depression, work-related stress, career vs. family, illness, infertility, divorce, all types of addiction, particularly alcoholism and restriction of mobile device use among children.

The project partner has been the Institute for Psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, with prominent psychologists and psychiatrists, persons who needed professional aid at some point and celebrities who have talked about their personal experience participating in all public debates and the audience actively engaged in all sessions.

In order to influence the public, we have decided to place debate stories via a native campaign and thus point to the importance of prevention and professional assistance in maintaining mental health. We have selected one of the most popular premium portals – Telegraf.rs for placing posts. For the purpose of reaching the widest readership audience possible interesting in mental health topics, we used native ads on Midas portal network, a widget located below posts at more than 80 sites.

Analytics says it all

A readership rate has been exceptionally high, confirming that our population requires this type of information and discussion with experts when having a related problem. The highest readership rate has been registered for native posts on divorce and all forms of addiction, particularly alcoholism, with a total of 26,000 readers and the average post viewing of 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

Native ads with each of eight topics leading to either a post or the webpage of the Hemofarm Foundation have registered more than 11.8 million views, with more than 13,000 reading the information in this manner.

Announcement of new round of mental health public debates  

The popularity of the public debates indicates that the topic of mental health draws strong public attention and that people need assistance in the form of a “common”, open talk. Suzana Đorđević, the Hemofarm Foundation Director, has announced the continuation of the “Having coffee with a psychologist” project for this autumn, with many other topics of relevance for the public. Until then, don’t be afraid, because a talk is a part of the solution to a problem.