Goodbye Legacy Search, Hello Native Search Advertising

Marissa Mayer aptly summarized just how hard it is to get search advertising right: “Search is an unsolved problem. We keep trying to make it better and better, but there’s always more work to do.” 

The difference between then and now is that we’re finally entering an era where that work she references can actually take shape to improve search.

The search industry, dominated for decades by a single player, is on the cusp of being released from the grasp of an illegal monopoly thanks to a landmark antitrust ruling in the US v. Google trial. The legacy search approach centered around the search engine results page (SERP), has festered for years, burdening consumers with a frustrating one-size-fits-all experience and increasingly irrelevant results while simultaneously raising costs and weakening performance for advertisers.

But with a remedy to Google’s monopolistic practices on the horizon, the search advertising industry is prime for meaningful change, competition, and innovation for the first time in decades. Say goodbye to legacy search and hello to native search advertising.

What Is Native Search Advertising?

Native search advertising is an incremental media channel that exists outside of the legacy SERP environment established by Google. Native search delivers high-quality media that is seamlessly integrated into the consumer search journey. 

The native search experience provides more relevant ads and results to consumers without disrupting their journey, making their experience less intrusive and more natural and intuitive to the platforms and channels they’re searching on.

Native search is all about regaining control back from Google’s one-size-fits-all model and giving consumers a choice other than funneling them through the legacy SERP. It fosters a landscape where innovation and transparency can finally thrive, enabling consumers to pick the kind of search experience they want to have and empowering other search advertising players to innovate and meet that demand.

The Value of Native Search

While the legacy SERP has long been the cornerstone of search advertising, it has fostered an environment of pervasive and growing pain points for advertisers, publishers, and consumers alike. These include:

• A rigid, inefficient consumer search experience
• An increasing lack of relevant results and outcomes
• Skyrocketing advertiser costs resulting in slashed budgets
• Plummeting media performance and decreased optimization opportunities
• Little to zero transparency into media value
• Less control and limited ability to innovate the search experience

Native search solves for these pain points by creating a more intuitive and transparent ecosystem that benefits those three stakeholders. 

1. Consumers: Unlocked Choice & Increased Relevance

Native search ads benefit users by seamlessly blending into the natural flow and experience of their search journey, regardless of the platform they’re searching on. Gone are the obtrusive ads that disrupt the platform experience, as well as the ones that have no relevance to the consumer’s interests or query at all. 

Native search creates a playing field where consumers will naturally gravitate to platforms that provide the most engaging and intuitive experience that delivers the most relevant results in the shortest amount of time. 

2. Advertisers: Transparent Media Value & Incremental Performance

Native search provides advertisers an incremental media channel outside of the diminishing returns of Google, Bing, and affiliate networks. By diversifying beyond legacy search, advertisers can achieve efficiency at scale with lower funnel results, reversing the downward trend of media performance many brands are facing today. This results in upper funnel consumer impact and positions advertisers to win market share over their competitors.

Additionally, advertisers reducing their reliance on a single platform by investing in native search can unlock more accurate, transparent, and credible insights into their media value and performance. This allows for more campaign optimization and control over ad placements and budget, affording them higher incremental lift on their media.

3. Publishers: Increased Yield & Stronger User Engagement

Native search fosters an ecosystem of competition that results in more relevant ads, which in turn leads to higher publisher yield compared to legacy search ads. This ecosystem also affords publishers greater control and ability to innovate their search experience in order to create and capture long-term user value.

By design, native search ads cohesively fit into the consumer search experience publishers create for their platforms, keeping users more engaged, reducing bounce rates, and growing customer loyalty. They then have the ability to monetize these engaged users and their impressions to continue increasing their yield.

‍adMarketplace: The Leader in Native Search Advertising

‍As the pioneer of native search advertising, adMarketplace has been at the forefront of consumer search innovation for over 20 years. Our transparent, exclusive media allows advertisers to diversify outside of legacy search to grow share of voice and win market share on the internet’s leading browsers, shopping apps, and editorial sites. For publishers, our native search solutions provide the opportunity to innovate and monetize native search experiences to increase yield and user engagement.

Ready to explore the benefits of native search advertising? Partner with adMarketplace today to revolutionize your search strategy and unlock performance and transparency that will position your brand as a winner in the dawning era of native search.