Publishers can’t just hang their hats on quality content and hope to thrive. Almost all publishers have to figure out a way to drive and monetize traffic that their content produces.

Operating a website is an extremely competitive endeavor. Thus, publishers should develop an aggressive approach to properly monetize content and use traffic to keep their websites funded.

Here are four ways you can more effectively drive, maintain and monetize content as a publisher:

1. Constantly Promote Your Content

Publishers can’t rely on sufficient ROI with minimal marketing. Recirculating content not only keeps traffic on your website, but also puts evergreen content in front of your audience to keep them interested. The ad units on your website don’t just have to promote advertisers’ content; they can also be used to engage your audience and inspire increased exploration of your site.

Once you’ve got interested visitors perusing your content, the likelihood of them engaging with ads increases. So, then, by increasing viewership on your website via content recirculation, you’re also maximizing your potential revenue from advertising.

2. Utilize Native Advertising

While some advertisers may continue to use banner ads and other more “traditional” forms of digital marketing (despite their drawbacks), many are turning to native advertising as another way to engage with consumers.

Native advertisements offer advertisers a fresh way to interact with readers without disrupting their experience on your website. Native ads often cost less to produce than banner ads and provide a more versatile, engaging experience for readers.

For example, mobile banner ads can interfere with readers’ natural flow through a piece, prompting some to flat-out ignore the display or, worse, leave your website altogether.

Conversely, native advertising units fit seamlessly within content, and consumers end up walking away feeling like they’ve been informed rather than feeling like your ad intruded on their reading experience.

Moreover, native advertising yields financial dividends. Native advertising revenue is expected to hit $10.7 billion this year. Embracing native advertising will allow you to attract new advertisers and increase your profit, which will allow you to continue publishing.

3. Don’t Neglect Mobile

Next time you take public transportation — or are anywhere in public, for that matter — take a quick scan of the people around you. Where is their attention fixed? Most of those eyes are probably glued to some sort of mobile device.

Such mobile-savvy consumers are quick to click away from a page that doesn’t have an enticing mobile layout. With so many content platforms to compete with, an optimized mobile aesthetic is key. Fifty-five percent of readers’ time on The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Insider and About.com is spent on those outlets’ mobile offerings as opposed to their desktop counterparts.

Mobile revenue isn’t matching readership in terms of fervor, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Make sure the ads on your page can be optimized for mobile, or you’ll be losing out on potential revenue you probably didn’t even know existed.

4. Keep Tinkering

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to monetizing your audience; it’s a process that requires patience and dedication.

Just as you constantly tweak your content to appeal to your audience, put the same effort into testing new ad units to see what works best. Any ad network you work with should be happy to do this and provide great suggestions. After all, the network wants to succeed just as much as you do.

Securing your place in the web traffic business is difficult, but the above steps construct a viable path to creating profitable content. Crafting quality content and working with an ad network to properly drive, maintain and monetize your product will aid you in staving off content-producing competitors.

The post How Publishers Can Drive, Maintain, and Monetize Content appeared first on Relevance.

It’s more than irritating; it’s disingenuous and rude.

Think of native advertising the same way. It’s not that readers are disinterested in your product or content; they just want to know who’s talking to them and the motives behind the conversation.

Not All Disclosure Is Created Equal

All native advertising needs to carry some form of disclosure, but it’s the nature of the disclosure that makes all the difference.

Some of the most common types of disclosure, such as homepage buyouts and banners at the top of an ad, are less than 30 percent effective in being noticed and understood by readers.

This failure rate doesn’t bode well for anyone. If a reader enjoys a content piece without ever realizing you sponsored it, you’ve done yourself no favors. And if a reader feels duped by your sneakily promotional content, they’ll associate negative feelings with your brand.

I urge you to be clever, witty and creative with the presentation of your native advertising — just do so without being deceptive. If your content is valuable and helpful, why wouldn’t you want to clearly and transparently tell readers that you wrote it?

How to Properly Disclose Native Ads

Maximizing consumer engagement while keeping native ads transparent is not an easy task. There are two main factors that go into the effectiveness of your ad: clear disclosure and consistent messaging.

Here’s how to ensure success in both of these arenas:

Clear, Visible Disclosure

It doesn’t matter whether your content is editorial or promotional; you still need to make sure the widget or landing page hosting your ad is clearly labeled as sponsored content. This disclosure should be more than visible to the reader and preferably displayed prominently in the top right-hand corner of the page.

The industry hasn’t yet settled on ideal disclosure wording, and BuzzFeed and The New York Times are testing the limits of this plight to mixed reviews. Until a standard is set, your ultimate goal should be to promote as much transparency through disclosure as possible.

Consistent, Honest Messaging

Don’t bait and switch readers. If you sell pools, don’t talk about bikinis because it’ll get you more clicks. The bikini-interested consumers who click on your link will immediately leave and may even associate your brand with sleaziness because of dishonesty.

Be honest upfront — even if it only earns you half the clicks. These clicks will be more meaningful and qualified, and you will have a much better chance of gaining sales or positive associations with your brand.

In the end, strong content that sparks reader interest combined with clear disclosure and relevant branding is the trifecta of native advertising. It’s something that Adobe has nailed with its sponsored “CMO Today” section on the Wall Street Journal’s website, and it’s what Virgin Mobile has successfully done by sponsoring an entire section of stories about mobile technology on BuzzFeed.

If the content is great, consumers won’t mind if it’s abundantly clear that it’s sponsored material. So stop beating around the bush, and start proudly telling the world that you care about creating relevant and helpful content.

The post Full Disclosure: Why Transparency in Native Advertising Is Good for Everyone appeared first on Relevance.

Did you see the March edition of Forbes? The cover seems normal at first glance: a photo of a man with his tie blowing in the breeze, catchy article teasers and a native ad for Fidelity.

Wait a second. There’s a native advertisement on the cover of Forbes?

Forbes is a legendary brand that has a reputation for pushing the envelope of journalism and advertising, but placing a native ad on the cover of its magazine is new territory.

Given the growing popularity of native advertising, Forbes will not be the last publication to make such a move. Although native advertising has its detractors, when done well, it’s one of the best ways for businesses to reach their audiences.

In order to better understand the current state of native advertising, it’s best to take a look at how we got to where we are today.

The Birth Of Native Advertising

The concept of native advertising in print dates back to the early 1900s. But it didn’t appear online until about 10 years ago.

The earliest web advertisements were flashing banners and pop-ups. They were obvious, inconvenient and annoying. Readers could, at first glance, tell the difference between content and the display ads that populated publisher pages. Click-through rates were dismal on these ad units, so publishers and ad networks went back to the drawing board and decided to bring native advertising to the Internet.

The idea behind digital native advertising was to create ads that would fit in naturally with a publication’s content. At first, brands and advertisers took this concept to the extreme and often failed to disclose that the ads were ads. As a result, click-through rates soared. But it didn’t take long for customers to catch on. They felt duped and began to distrust publications and brands.

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Honesty Is the Best Policy

Today’s culture places a premium on honesty. So in advertising, it’s more important than ever to be transparent with your purpose and your labeling. All native ads need to be clearly marked as such. If they aren’t labeled, readers will feel deceived. And if they associate your brand with deception, they’ll never want to do business with you.

It’s also important for publications to be selective. The Atlantic learned this the hard way in early 2013. The publication ran a native ad for Scientology that boasted a “milestone year” for the religion. The magazine’s readers found the content unappealing and shared their opinions in the comments section and on social media. This caused The Atlantic to remove the ad and apologize.

Deceptive and poorly placed native advertisements can end up doing businesses and publications more harm than good. The negative publicity alone could be tough to bounce back from.

How To Keep It Real

Even with the associated risks, native advertising is a great option for delivering valuable, targeted content to consumers. When done properly, everyone wins. Publishers can associate their names with great content and brands, while advertisers can spread to new markets and grow their reputations.

Here are four tips that have been thoroughly tested over the years and are proven to help increase native ad credibility:

1. Be Obvious In Labeling

When defending the Fidelity ad on its cover, Forbes pointed out that it used the term “FidelityVoice,” which is similar to the “BrandVoice” tag it typically assigns to sponsored content. This might have seemed obvious to the magazine’s editorial staff, but it flew over the heads of most people. Now Forbes is paying the price for doing something it thought was clever.

Don’t get too cute with your native ads. You should insist that publishers or ad networks stamp your content with clear and obvious language that designates it as sponsored material. Language such as “Offers and Articles From Around the Web” or “Sponsored Content” will suffice. Or simply stating “Ads by X” might be enough. Whatever language you use, audiences should be more than aware that they are reading your words and not the publication’s.

2. Don’t Be Ashamed Of Advertising

Why are companies so afraid of admitting that an advertisement is an advertisement?

Advertisements are a widely accepted part of society. Consumers understand that businesses and publications need to buy and sell ads to stay afloat. If you gave money to a publication in exchange for the publishing of your content, call it what it is: an advertisement.

Being upfront about your ads will increase consumer trust in both your message and your brand.

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3. Be Proud Of Your Brand

Be proud that your company produces valuable content for consumers. Because you are paying for the placement of this material, why hide behind the publication’s brand?

Instead, utilize the publication’s platform to personally deliver your message to its audience. Trying to hide your involvement in the publishing process is counterproductive.

4. Work With Editors

If you are not fully confident in your ability to tell your story, publications are more than willing to help you craft your native advertisements. They do this for a living, so why not take advantage of their services?

Crafting clean and professional content is crucial to your brand’s reputation. If your copy is sloppy, publications might refuse to run your ad. Make sure you are utilizing every available tool to create sharp, effective and transparent advertisements.

When done well, native advertising campaigns offer valuable content to consumers, revenue for publishers and exposure for your brand – a win-win-win situation.

But proper labeling and disclosure make all the difference. Make sure consumers know that you can be trusted.

The post 4 Steps to Open and Honest Native Advertising appeared first on Relevance.