"How Readers Feel About Native Ads in 4 Charts"

Below in "How Readers Really Feel about Native Ads in 4 Charts"  we gain some valuable insights on what readers respond to and where they engage with native advertising.
Some valuable takeaways:
1. 27% who read general news sites say it adds value
2. Sponsored content resonates more within business sites than general news sites
3. Brands that already resonate with the site (trusted amongst readers) have more effectiveness with native
4.  Native is (therefore) less successful in raising new brand awareness.
5. The content still has to be engaging, the brand has to be a leader and trust with the reader is essential.
6. Tablet can yield higher engagement than desktop
6. The more educated the reader, the harder it is to engage
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http://digiday.com/publishers/readers-sponsored-content/

Publishers may be having a love affair with sponsored content, but what about their readers? Three recent studies provide new insights into how readers perceive the native ads that publishers are so enamored of. Turns out, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Here are four charts that describe reader sentiment about sponsored content.

Native-ad effectiveness depends on focus of the siteThe IAB and Edelman Berland’s July 2014 report on sponsored content shows engagement is higher on business- and entertainment-oriented sites than on general news sites.

The survey of 5000 U.S. Web users found that only 27 percent of general news readers agree that sponsored content adds value to their experience of a site, versus the average of 38 percent for overall respondents across categories.

General news readers consistently saw sponsored content as less favorable and less likely to result in positive brand uplift for the brand or publisher, as this chart shows.

Reputations count on both sidesNative-ad effectiveness depends on the reputation of both the brand and publisher. The IAB’s report shows news publishers see more engagement when they work with familiar and trusted brands. The corollary to this, however, is that native advertising is less effective for generating new brand awareness.

The chart below breaks down which factors are most relevant to readers of different types of content when it comes to native advertising — whether the brand is conveying important information, whether the brand is an authority or whether the brand is simply trustworthy. Turns out, content is still king.

Local attitudes matterBrits prefer longer headlines than Americans. According to Polar’s U.K. native advertising benchmarks, 60-80-character headlines achieve the best click-through rate, whereas U.S. readers prefer 40-60-character headlines. Another surprising statistic from the same report: Readers outside of London are twice as likely to engage with a native ad versus those in London.

“Engaged time” improves on smartphones and tabletsNative advertising performs better on smartphone and tablet devices compared to the same content on desktop. This is especially true for U.K. users, according to Polar’s benchmarks. A native ad on a smartphone has 64 percent higher click-through rate over desktop (compared to 31 percent globally), according to Polar. U.K. readers spend 3 minutes and 37 seconds on average engaging (measured as time spent) with a native ad on tablet, which is 30 percent higher than the global average. Specifically, U.K. readers have 39 percent higher engagement on tablet over desktop, and 45 percent higher engagement on smartphone over desktop.

Eggheads are less likely to clickA survey of 542 Web users conducted by Contently brought up a few interesting insights on how sponsored content is perceived by readers, broken down by education level. The research suggests better-educated readers are harder to get clicks out of — and gain the trust of – as the following charts demonstrate.