I was a bit surprised to see the number of Google searches for the term advertorial advertising went up by 900% in the last three months.
I haven’t heard anyone talks about advertorial advertising for a long, long time. I am not sure if it is coming back, but I notice there isn’t much information about this type of advertising that can be found online, so I thought I should write a post about it in case you want to know more.
What is advertorial advertising?
Advertorial = Advertising + editorial.
An advertorial is a type of advertising that is presented as editorial content, and it often comes in the form of an article, web page, or video. It pretends to be an editorial to give the audience an illusion that they are consuming content created by the publication, but what they are reading or watching is actually an advertisement.
Types of advertorial advertising
Advertorial advertising can be in different forms, but you will mostly find it as an article or a video.
Advertorial article
An advertorial article is designed to look like the articles that appear on a website or in a publication. It is usually required to include words like “advertisement” or “special promotional feature” subtly in a corner, so people can distinguish them from stories written by the publication, if they pay enough attention.
Advertorial video
An effective advertorial video is short and catchy. It needs to communicate the necessary information fast or you lose the audience.
Reasons to use advertorial advertising
Cost and effectiveness are the two major reasons for advertisers to choose advertorial over traditional advertising.
Cheaper than traditional advertisements
Traditional advertisements have always been expensive. But an advertisement that comes in a form of editorial content is much cheaper.
Easier to engage your audience
People are likely to receive more information from an advertorial simply because it is not an ad.
People ignore advertisements. But when your content appears to not be an ad, people are more willing to consume it, hence allows you to engage and introduce more features and benefits of your product or service to your target audience.
