HOLLYWOOD, FL: Xerox, the services and solutions provider, has successfully leveraged a "test-and-repeat" strategy to refine its approach to native advertising.

Christopher Boles, Xerox's director/global media and advertising, discussed this subject at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2015 Media Leadership Conference.

The "primary goal" underpinning the organisation's native advertising initiatives, he revealed, was "to insist that the work be aligned to our marketing goals." (For more, including details of the brand's specific programs, read Warc's exclusive report: Xerox's test-and-repeat road to native advertising.)

But, he admitted, some of the company's early efforts fell somewhat short of this mark. "We've really adjusted to make sure that we were more on point."

This has involved finessing its model over time and across various partnerships with media owners like The Week, Forbes and Bloomberg.

"All our programs have the same DNA," Boles said, "but they live in the different environments of each of the publisher's sites.

"So they need to be adjusted for those specific environments. We're tracking the same core metrics, but the individual details of each program are going to change."

One vital goal for brands in this area is to "make sure to match [the native content] with the tone of the topic set for the audience in the publication," Boles continued.

"You want it to feel natural. You want it to be a valuable part of their editorial, even though it is an advertisement."

Ensuring that native advertising is informative and valuable in the context it is seen can also give it a much deeper meaning and, therefore, drive stronger results.

Not achieving such a degree of relevance, by contrast, threatens to lessen the influence of this content on the target audience, and thus limit its impact for brands

"One of the biggest things we've found is that, if you build it, it doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to come," Boles said in discussing this subject.

Data sourced from Warc