Common Native Advertising Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
The native advertising mistakes that tripped up brands in 2013, from disguised ads to unmeasured campaigns, and what to do instead.
Native advertising looked simple from the outside in 2013: pay a publisher, get a sponsored post that blends in. In practice, most of the early campaigns that underperformed shared the same handful of avoidable mistakes. Here’s what went wrong and how to skip it.
Treating native as a reskinned banner
The single biggest mistake was handing over the same ad copy and offer used in a display banner and just formatting it to look like an article. Readers noticed instantly, engagement collapsed and the publisher’s audience learned to skip that brand’s placements going forward. Native only works when the content itself is worth reading on its own, independent of the sponsorship.
Hiding the sponsorship instead of owning it
Some early native campaigns tried to blur the line between sponsored and editorial content as much as the platform would allow. This backfired twice over: readers who figured it out (and they usually did) trusted the brand less, and publishers were increasingly wary of advertisers pushing for weaker disclosure, since it put the publisher’s own credibility at risk. A clear “Sponsored” or “Presented by” label cost nothing and protected the relationship.
Ignoring the publication’s own voice
A sponsored post written in corporate marketing language stood out immediately against a publisher’s usual style, and not in a good way. The campaigns that performed matched the publication’s tone, structure and even its typical headline style. Brands that let the publisher’s editorial team shape the piece, rather than insisting on their own house style, generally saw better results.
Judging performance on clicks alone
Native units historically pulled a much higher click-through rate than banners, which led some marketers to declare victory too early. But a click on a native unit that leads to a generic landing page, disconnected from the story that earned the click, converts poorly. Judging native purely by clicks missed the format’s real strength: sustained attention and brand association, which show up in time on page and repeat engagement, not just the first click.
Running one placement and calling it a strategy
A single sponsored post on a single publisher isn’t a strategy, it’s a test. Some brands spent their entire native budget on one high-profile placement, got a modest bump and concluded the format didn’t work. The businesses that built something durable ran smaller, repeated placements across a couple of publishers and used the early results to refine what content and format performed before scaling spend.
Skipping the follow-through
Native content that ends without a clear next step, a link to more useful content, a way to sign up, a related resource, wastes the attention it just earned. The format’s job is to earn trust; the follow-through is what turns that trust into a lead or a sale.
The pattern behind all of it
Every one of these mistakes comes from treating native advertising like display media wearing a costume. It isn’t. It behaves more like content marketing with a media placement attached, and it needs to be judged, written and measured that way. Get that mindset right and most of these mistakes solve themselves.
Browse more Paid Advertising coverage, everything from 2013 or the Digital Business Marketing Awards.
