bidtellect’s quarterly native report q3 2016: engagement is key to your native advertising success

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THE LEADING NATIVE PLATFORMB U I L T F O R C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G . B U I L T F O R R E S U L T S .NICOLE KAPNER | Sr. Manager of Marketing and Communications

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Bidtellect Quarterly Report Q3 2016Engagement Is Key To Your Native Advertising Success

As marketers wade deeper into Native Advertising, they need to have a better understanding of how to drive the best results and engagement across devices, formats, success metrics and content categories.

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Introduction

Bidtellect’s Quarterly Native Report was created to provide advertisers with important insights and trends in the Native Advertising industry. Bidtellect’s platform processes over 5 billion Native auctions daily across 6.5 million distinctly targetable placements, and this number continues to grow quarter over quarter. We collect data from the start of an auction through post-click consumer activity including but not limited to the metrics captured in this report.

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Native is Cross-Device

CTRs were an average of 200% higher on mobile than desktop in Q1-Q3 2016, showing that consumers are actively clicking on content on mobile devices. But what actions do they take once they are there?

Mobile CTR Desktop CTR Comparison

Q1 Q2 Q3

165% Higher CTR onMobile than Desktop



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Desktop is Winning Engagement

Although CTRs were higher on mobile than desktop, mobile is not where the deeper engagement is happening. Post-click engagement is significantly greater on desktop than mobile. On average in 2016 year-to-date, page views were 130% higher on desktop than mobile, and bounce rates were 37% lower on desktop than mobile.

Bounce Rate Desktop Comparison

Q1 Q2 Q3

MobilePage Views

130% More Pageviews(Desktop vs. Mobile)

33% Lower Bounce Rate(Desktop vs. Mobile)





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Marketers Primary Native Campaign Objectives

Demand for Native has increased so rapidly and marketers are using the more common and less sophisticated metrics such as CTR to measure campaign success. When using new formats, marketers tend to stick with what they know, but as Native continues to grow, Bidtellect believes that post-engagement metrics will become more widely adopted.

CTR

Q1

Q2

Q3

Conversions Engagement

54%

60%

78%

11%

13%

13%

35%

27%

15%

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Different Formats Generate Different Levels of Engagement

In-feed placements generate higher page views and lower bounce rates than the In-Ad and Recommendation Widget units. These are the most premium Native unit driving the highest consumer engagement. On average in 2016 year-to-date, In-feed page views were 147% higher than in-Ad and 163% higher than RW, In-feed bounce rates were 19% lower than In-Ad and 30% lower RW.

In-Ad

In-Feed

Recommendation Widget

In-Feed Comparison

Q1

Page Views Per Visit Bounce Rate

In-Feed Performed160% Better


In-Feed Was5% Lower

In-Feed Was27% Lower

Q2






Q1




In-Feed was40% Worse

In-Feed was30% Lower

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TravelHow Are Consumers Engaging Across Publisher Categories?

As people are planning their winter and holiday vacations they were actively engaging with travel based content in Q3. Law, Gov’t & Politics and News based content were also highly engaged with in Q3, correlating with the Presidential Election in November. Engagement score is expressed through a simple score, 0-10.

Engagement Score*

9.6

Careers 9.4

News 9.2

Business 9.1

Law Gov’t & Politics 9.1

Personal Finance 9.1

Home & Garden 9.0

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Key Takeaways

Post-Click Engagement Metrics

For marketers trying to reach their audiences on mobile devices, they need to transition away from CTR as a success metric, and toward post-click engagement metrics. Consumers are clicking on content on their mobile devices, but are less likely to engage further on mobile than desktop. For marketers to get the most out of their cross-device content marketing and Native advertising strategies, they need to optimize against these post-engagement metrics.

In-FeedPlacements

In-Feed placements drive the most consumer engagement compared to In-Ad and Recommendation Widgets. All three formats are extremely valuable, but including In-Feed placements in your Native plans will ultimately drive the best results with consumers.

PlanAhead

Creating and distributing timely content to your consumers will produce the highest levels of engagement. Don’t wait for the days or week before an event, reach them in the weeks and months leading up so they are fully educated.

Post Engagement Metrics

Post-engagement metrics, across devices and formats, will become increasingly critical for marketers as they seek more meaningful ways to determine how consumers are interacting with their content.

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*What is Bidtellect’s Proprietary Metric Engagement Score?

Bidtellect’s Engagement Score is the industry’s only post-click engagement metric, designed to determine how engaging a given piece of content is. The proprietary algorithm tracks, measures and optimizes against pageviews, time on site, bounce rate and user sessions.

Pageviews, Time on Site, Bounce Rate and User Sessions Generate Engagement ScoreAbout Bidtellect

Bidtellect is the leading paid content distribution platform providing marketers with one platform to execute Native campaigns across all formats and devices including text, imagery and video. Marketers leverage Bidtellect’s proprietary real-time optimization algorithms, first- and third- party data targeting, advanced KPI optimization and a team of industry experts, to drive real results for paid content distribution campaigns to deliver smart advertising. Bidtellect delivers access to the world's most expansive Native ecosystem of premium placements in order to achieve unparalleled scale.

The company is headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida and was launched in 2013 by the digital media industry’s most successful ad tech pioneers.