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Best native practices for eCommerce? (10)

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Hello everyone! This is my first post here, and first of all I just wanted to say that you guys have built an amazing community here I've been lurking here for quite some time now, and I've seen plenty of helpful and kind people who are willing to share their thoughts and recommendations, which I think is awesome.

But anyways, I'm writing this post because I thought maybe some of you had experience with online (preferably clothing) stores and native advertising? If so, how would you go about advertising clothing on natives?

I've been already doing this for 4 months or so, with $7,500 spent in taboola but with no success. Haven't even broke even yet. At first I tried sending users directly to collection page, tried many different creatives, but that didn't go to well. After that and after doing some research on adplexity and adbeat I noticed that a lot of online stores run listicle type of blogs. For example "5 reasons why people are switching to Quip electric toothbrush". So I decided to do some blogs as well. Similar listicle style, with links to products in the landing page, tried many different angles, but that didn't work either. Finally, I decided to give retargeting a go, since it works pretty well on facebook. It's been only few days, and I haven't tried lots of creatives, but I can already tell that results are not very promising.

Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong? I know I need to test, test and test again. But thought maybe you guys could give any advices regarding this problem of mine? If so, I would really appreciate it!

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Hey Eddie- That's a fascinating question man...

I'll throw in my .02$ but I would stress that I am far from an expert on Taboola, and I have never run an clothing/ecommerce store or anything like that.

I have run a lot of GiddyUp type ecom offers on Taboola/Outbrain/Revcontent though, and lots of listicles, and have spent untold hundreds of hours scouring adplexity looking over campaigns.

I too see some clothing advertised on Taboola, but I've never heard anyone on here or anywhere else report it working (although that doesn't mean it doesn't- just that I haven't heard it).

I think one reason is that clothing seems to be much more 'Brand'-based and tied to specific demographics.

So whereas a toothbrush or tracking device or gadget or car-doctor device appeals to basically every demographic, specific types of clothing or brands of clothing might only appeal to very specific demographics, like 'young men who lift weights', or 'Hunters', or 'Pug Lovers', or 'Women over 60' (at least that's how it seems to me- I could totally be wrong), and as a result, it seems that most branded clothing stores do more advertising on facebook/instagram/youtube/pinterest where you can target people based on very specific demographic data and interests.

I do know lots of clothing ecom stores rely heavily on email marketing though and building devoted lists of followers, etc, and there are definitely people building email lists on native (primarily as part of a listicle or among the 'financial'/'investing' vertical).

So yeah, I don't know if that helps... but if I was going to throw out any ideas it would be:

1. Target super specific sites that match your demographic through whitelists, or through the demographic targeting that Taboola does have.
2. Build email list
3. Keep doing listicles, and maybe even combine your clothing products with some other products you just run as an affiliate. For instance if you're clothing store appeals to men over 50, you could do something like "Top Ten Gifts For Dads And Grandpa's" and have some survival vsl's mixed with some car gadgets mixed with a couple blurbs linking to your clothes and maybe one linking to your email list. And then either target "Men Over 50" via Taboola's demographic targeting, or else target sites like Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Breitbart, CNN, Investing.com, Fox News, etc that are heavily skewed toward that demographic (not all those sites are Taboola properties but just throwing them out as examples).

Also I just remembered- one thing I have seen people have success with that is similar is Watch stores. I have seen several different fancy Shopify Watch stores selling wood and stone watches if I remember right, and other kinds of watches. It seems like their ads were either talking about a huge one time sale and then linked to a list of all the watches with a blurb beneath each 'selling' it, OR played up the "Founders" angle and talked all about the origin story of the person who started the watch store or the watch brand or whatever. The founders angle always seems to work great so you could certainly do some kind of advertorial or advertorial + vsl based around that.

But yeah not sure if all that helps but again just throwing out some ideas!

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I don't really hear people talking about running their own ecom stores on native to be honest, with the discussion almost always centered around Facebook/IG, Google, and now Snapchat.

Unlike those sources, you're a lot more limited with your targeting options to drive ROI on native, so you really need to have a broad appeal offer as Jack says, and/or have some killer ad creatives to secure volume for low enough CPCs to make up for not having a broad offer.

Which however is a lot more doable with your own product, since amateur type photos tend to do well, but I'm not sure how they'd fare for clothing in your example. The kinds of ads I see for clothing are more along the lines of 'Why Guys are Going Crazy for these Jeans", or "The Company Disrupting the Billion Dollar Sweatshirt Industry"

If I were to launch my own ecom offers on native, I'd probably just run similar offers to what GiddyUp or DFO does, eg mostly tech gadgets. Most of those you can find on aliexpress etc like the 'pest reject', 'USB artic air cooler,' etc and I see a few of those type of campaigns floating around.

On retargeting:
Are you talking about re-targeting on native itself? I don't think there's enough volume there to make it worthwhile in my experience. But what about re-targeting native visitors on facebook? That's something I've been meaning to test lately.

edit: I do remember a past affiliate world speaker talking about ecom on native in like 2017/2018? Trying to remember his name. Main point I took away was him talking about running campaigns internationally first to get funnel dialed into before going into the US.

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Hey, Jack! I could swear that I saw you on mad society forum

Anyways, great answer and yup we're doing all that stuff, I mean facebook, email marketing, youtube, instagram, and I think pinterest as well. My boss assigned me to crack the native advertising, though, and I'm certainly not giving up anytime soon because I really want to make some profit, sooner or later (which I'm sure HAS to happen, it's only a matter of time... riight?). One thing I don't quite get is why people keep saying that niche products/offers are a bad idea on natives? I mean, if you specifically call out your target audience in headlines/images doesn't that mean that the ones who are not interested are simply not going to click on it, and thus it won't cost us anything? I do understand that niche will result in lower CTR, but how important is CTR in natives anyways?(probably a stupid question) Currently on desktop we get 0.22% CTR, is it considered low?

Also, I did see some very successful eCommerce clothing brands that run on natives. I remember the Bombas socks, the Mack Weldon underwear and some other stuff. Of course it's socks and underwear, everybody needs those, so it makes sense that they are successful at that. But still it's kind of clothing. Our target audience is women over 45, which is like 15% of population, which is not a lot, but still, it MIGHT be enough. I'm not sure though.

Also you mentioned taboola's audience targeting, I haven't used it that much, you think it's worth taking a shot?

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We're currently retargeting on facebook and it works like charm, I highly recommend you trying it. That's why we wanted to test it on natives as well.

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The publishers and networks are not stupid - if you have an ads in a very tiny niche and very few people click on it. No publishers will want to waste their inventory display your ads without getting paid. So you end up paying for it in the form of higher CPC.

Hope this helps.

I m currently trying to crack e-com on native as well.


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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In my opinion you need something a little more unique for native (clothes are a bit too bland) - but if you have the right angle it could work (e.g recent trend of indestructible shoes).

One thing I've seen consistently re dropshipping on native (Taboola/Outbrain/Revcontent etc) is those mosquito zap devices - they look like time machines so the ads tend to be pretty eye catching and solve a problem in most countries around the world. If anyone reading this tries to jump on that train be smart with targeting.

Don't advertise in winter, but look at that sweet trendline as summer nears!

https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...5-y&q=mosquito

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Hey buddy- yes you probably did see me on mad society too

But yeah, even though you are paying on a cpc model, you're still paying for impressions at the end of the day, because your cpc is directly correlated to your ctr.

So for instance someone running Tax Debt Assistance on Taboola Desktop might pay 3.00$ a click because they'd have a VERY low click through rate for that vertical, whereas someone running a "Ten Crazy Yoga Pants Shocking Walmart Pictures" arbitrage-ad might be paying .10$ because they get a massively high click through rate

Typically in my experience ecom products are close to as expensive as lead gen, and on Taboola Desktop US I usually pay like .70-1.00$ for most GiddyUp/DFO type products on desktop, and 1.00-2.00$ for most lead-gen on desktop.

On normal native media buying you can't really control who gets served your ads demographically, so if you have a niche ad you'll pay a lot more for the clicks.

To riff on something James Van Elswyck says, think of it like the DMV- everyone has to go to the DMV so it's a cross-section of America as a whole. A native ad is the equivalent of someone holding up an sign in a DMV. If the sign is for auto insurance or weight loss supplement or a cool keychain gadget, there's invariably going to be people interested.

On the other hand, if it's a special lifting t-shirt with esoteric Norse Runes on it that sells for 65$ to a tiny subculture of weightlifting pagan rune philologists, or a shirt that says "Ask Me About My Three Labradoodles!", you're going to have a tougher time getting interest

With that said though it sounds like you guys have a pretty wide demographic, so hopefully that won't be a problem And if you guys are already killing it on all those other traffic sources plus email, I would think native could work in some way or another. You could certainly retarget people through native who you find on facebook. Or only advertise on sites that skew heavily towards the 45+ female demographic for acquiring new customers....

But yeah, again just my two cents! As I said I'm far from an expert on Taboola!!!

And please keep us updated I'm interested to see how it goes!


PS And then yeah, on both Taboola and Outbrain they have built in 'audiences' you can target based on their demographic data or third party demographic data. I forget what it's called but you can select it when your choosing your targeting. For instance on Outbrain you could do 'Women Over 50 + Homeowner + Top 50% Income". I don't know how well it works but it's definitley a feature they have...

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So... interestingly... right after typing the above I was doing something or other online and came upon the following two advertorials on a Taboola widget. I think on Bloomberg.

Definitely interesting case studies in applying an ecommerce/clothing type model to native. Certainly somewhat advertorial-ish. I imagine these are big brands with funding though and the ads aren't "profitable" all by themself, but rather part of 'building the brand'... but you never know... if they have really good email marketing and retargeting setup they might get pretty cheap cpa's out of it...

https://try.mackweldon.com/7-reasons-why-guys-are-switching-to-mack-weldon?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=native&utm_ca mpaign=tb_pr_broad_dt&utm_content=bloomberg&

https://my.bombas.com/8-things/?utm_...tent=bloomberg

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Thx for sharing! It seems the above examples all worded like they are from review sites and with branded logos all over. I m wondering (as rule of thumb) is it usually better if these appear to from a third party review sites?


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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