A prominent publisher looked at native ads that they had on 65 of their websites to see what was driving CTR. They found that one of the biggest factors that impacted whether or not the links were clicked was the positioning of the required disclosure indicating that the post is actually an ad.
Publishers are able to put the disclosure either at the top of the headline, or at the bottom. When publishers put the disclosure right at the top of the post, above the headline, there was a .13% click through rate. When the disclosure is under the headline, the click through rate jumps up to .32%. While the rate of click is still fairly low, it is actually a very significant jump of just over 200%.
Greg Bella, director of Marketing at Polar, said, “When using the name of the advertiser, we found that publishers achieved the highest click-through rate, and that’s especially true on mobile. On mobile, the name of a brand comes across a lot crisper and cleaner.”
This type of testing is critical for effective marketing. When companies look at all the different options they have available to them for advertising, they can find little changes that can be done to produce significantly improved results. Having the ROI go up by even a small amount is going to be huge for many companies.
