Fork Media, backed by Rishi Khiani's Ant Farm*, has introduced two Advertising platforms: Brand Press, which is a native advertising platform, and Impulse, which is an image monetization platform. While Brand Press monetizes via sponsor driven content, Impulse creates interactivity on image galleries hosted by publishers. Fork, which launched in April this year, has so far delivered 150 campaigns for its clients, but only 14 of them have been "Native", its Founder and CEO Samar Verma told MediaNama. Native Advertising is a relatively new approach to online advertising, wherein brands provide content based on what users are passionate about, as opposed to sponsor content, where brand push their marketing message. Still finding its feet at a global level, Native Advertising is mostly absent in India. We spoke with Verma to get a sense of what advertisers are saying about Native Advertising, its metrics and pricing, the concerns that publishers have, and whether Native Advertising can scale: Advertiser Acceptability MediaNama: How are advertisers reacting to Native Advertising in India? My perception is that it is fairly alien to them. Verma: The way I look at Native Advertising, is that it is brand messaging seeded in content. Content Marketing as such has existed in forms across media, but it's a limited set of advertisers that has accepted content marketing. (For example) Shell may have wanted to do something around energy conservation, and I build that entire zone out for them, over 2-3 months, as a platform to engage with the audience. We've realized that…
