Partner Article

Go Native: Go walk through any local business…

‘Go Native!’ is nothing wholly new in the advertising industry; its a message that agencies have been pitching to client for a while now..

But there is a certain buzz to the realm of ‘native advertising’ right now; even if it qualifies as one of those industry terms that can mean anything to anyone.

But the Wikipedia definition is helpful enough: ’Native advertising is a web advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing valuable content in the context of the user’s experience…’

The idea being I guess that the advert sits easily within the content experience; it doesn’t jar in the way that the weight loss ad with the rolls of stomach fat does on a general news page. Ideally, it adds to the user’s engagement with that information space - it look, in short, as if it is designed to be there. Its meant to be.

In one distant corner of the Kingdom of Norfolk, we have just launched a rural wifi portal. Sat over the village of Loddon and funded out of last summer’s ‘Destination Local’programme funded by NESTA, the idea is pretty simple.

Just as a visitor to any local coffee shop will these days log-in to their free wifi, can we not encourage any village visitor to do the same?

And that, therefore, lends a certain ’context to the user’s experience…’ ie, the experience is one of the visitor.

With that thought in mind, we have been playing with the Spanish tech company, Voovio, of late; pioneering a new, native advertising experience with their ‘walk through’ application. The tech sits behind AmigoShop - we’ve just re-shaped and re-housed it within the Addiply platform; acting, in effect, as the distribution arm for an ‘AdSweep’ of any business or premises.

Only in this case, for one, rural High Street in one, rural village as opposed to the streets of Manhattan or Barcelona.

Visit the rural wifi portal that now sits, in part, atop the village of Loddon and now let’s start to ‘visit’ the local arts centre and pub - off web, mobile or tablet:

http://21vc.co.uk/loddoneye/category/visit/

It is perfectly contextual to that visitor experience; as one US media journalist put it, it ‘tells the story’ of that business. It is an invitation to walk through the doors of my world and let you, the visitor, explore… see what lies around this corner; what happens when you walk through that door.

These are very, very early days in our partnership with Voovio; Nick demonstrated their tech and their thinking at our #1000flowers event in Newcastlethis spring and I’m delighted that the conversations we had then have now blossomed into something physical; something positive and productive; something more valuable than a static banner ad in that local marketing space.

And there it is. An AdSweep powered by Voovio.

Its how we intend to go native this summer; how we intend to let every local business tell their own story; let 20 still pictures rolled together speak so much more than 1,000 words.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rick Waghorn .