Creative Best Practices

Headline Writing and Analysis

As noted in Why Buy Native?, native ads receive large amounts of attention from consumers browsing headlines in content feeds. Due to this, the headline is the most important element of a native ad. It is the perfect opportunity to connect with users and creative positive brand associations. Sharethrough recommends keeping the following in mind when making native creatives:

1. Uncover the most interesting "nugget" of the content and make that the headline. It will provide a singular interesting focus.
2. Bring the emotion of the content to the headline. The brain filters for information that fits previous emotional experiences — so telegraph that.
3. Write headlines within 3 of these 6 styles: Heartwarming, Questions, Jaw-Dropping, Inspiring, Innovative, Informative
4. Traffic at least 3 headlines per creative. It will allow for optimization to the best performing message.
5. Choose images that show human emotion. Using thumbnails that show a human clearly experiencing the emotion telegraphed by the headline will make it even more impactful.
6. Remember the brand. If the goal of the campaign is awareness, make sure that the headline includes a brand mention to get the full value of the impression.

Sharethrough has also developed this free online analyzer tool that offers real-time feedback on headlines to help improve effectiveness. Contact a Sharethrough rep for additional materials, including an in-person headline workshop and companion handbook.

Thumbnail Cropping

On all impression requests, Sharethrough will send two images:

• A small mobile thumbnail
• A large desktop thumbnail

Assuming an image is provided in one of the above aspect ratios (1:1, 4:3, or 16:9), the thumbnail will render as follows:

In the 20% of impressions outside of a 2:1 aspect ratio, the thumbnail will be cropped to fit the publisher’s designed integration. In those rare instances, Sharethrough applies image cropping technology to locate the center of the image and crop the image around that center point to the placement’s specified dimensions.

To maximize your campaign’s engagement, follow the below best practices for thumbnail images:

• Provide both a small and large thumbnail image.
• Provide an image that has an aspect ratio of 4:3.
• Avoid thumbnail images with text.
• In the event that your image is skewed high or wide, append the image with buffering to avoid image cropping: