Recommended Native Ads Spots for Mobile Site and Apps

Native Ads

Even though mobile site and apps are displayed on a small smartphone screen, our eyes don’t see everything displayed on it. A research was made for this purpose alone using VR technology to follow eyeball movements. The result is mobile website heat maps – map that shows sections that got most attentions in mobile display.

Each site and apps have different results, but the research show similar foundations. Users’ eyes recognize and ignore banner format spontaneously. Banner aside, users also have preferences in paying attention to sections. As native ads format blend in with the content, it is best to put the ads in the hot spots. We recommend putting your native ads in the following locations:

Mobile site

  1. Home – In feed

Home is usually the first page accessed when users are using search engine or bookmarked the page. It is best to put native ads on the section where it loads first, which is the top page. This seems like a small trivia, but a few lines difference in ads placement could produce different result. Users have bigger chance to see the ads once the page loads without having to scroll down the pages as sometimes they already make a click on one of the headlines without scrolling down. That’s a loss for advertisers and publishers because users are unknowingly skipping the ads.

Home Infeed
Home Infeed
  1. In Article – Mid Article

Nowadays media are taking advantage of their social media to boost articles and engage with users. Thus, it is common to find bigger pageview in articles pages than the Home page. Sometimes you see a few article suggestions in the middle of the article. That part usually consists of bullet points and headlines in different color. It is a good spot to put native ads in text form. Whether people are paying attention to the whole article or just skimming through, their eyes will catch the ‘Read More’ part because of the different format.

Mid Article
Mid Article
  1. In Article – Article Suggestions

There is another hot spot in the article page other than the middle part, which is the end of article. When users reached the end of the article, what’s waiting for them after the last sentence? The section filled with other articles to read or comment box. However, we are not going for the comment box. We are aiming more at the article suggestions. Instead of going back to the home page, it is more convenient for users to pick another news to read from the suggestion section.

Article Suggestions
Article Suggestions

Mobile apps 

There are many different categories for apps. For news apps, it’s mostly the same spots as mobile site. What I want to discuss here is the Game apps. Putting native ads in game apps is a little bit challenging because native ads nature is to blend with the content and format without interrupting the users. Unlike banner or video ads that force the players to stop playing, native ads shouldn’t fall into that category. Fundamentally, native ads should be placed at the screen where players are currently sidetracked from the game.

  1. Pause Screen

The Pause screen is a good spot for native ads. When players have distractions, they tend to pause the game and continue later. This way the ads is not the reason why players stopped playing game at the first place.

  1. Game Over Screen

Game over is also a good spot to place the native ads. It is the end screen when players finished playing. There is a small pause moment for users to see the ads before continuing the next stage or stop playing the game.

  1. Scoreboard

Scoreboard is where the users get to see how many points they got from the game. Sometimes this screen doesn’t exist in the game, like the pause screen. Often scoreboard is combined with the game over screen as well. If the scoreboard and game over screen are separated, publisher should take advantage of the both screen.

Game Over and Scoreboard
Game Over & Scoreboard Combined with Native Ads at the bottom

These are the most engaged spots in mobile sites and apps. Kindly note that each site and apps have different heat map due to their designs. By paying attention to the hot spots to put your native ads, achieving higher engagement and CTR  is possible and campaigns will be effective.