What Is Native Advertising?
The term ‘native advertising’ refers to a paid ad placement that appears in the same format and style as the non-paid content where it’s placed. For example, sponsored posts on your LinkedIn feed are clearly labeled as such, but otherwise they look the same as the organic posts around them.
Native ads can be found everywhere, from your favorite publisher sites to your favorite social channels.
As an advertisement that fits seamlessly into the user experience, they’re more contextual than other forms of digital advertising (e.g. display and banner ads). Instead of appearing off to the side or across the top of a web page, native ads mimic the look, feel, and function of a medium’s content.
This formatting helps improve the user experience, making the ad into part of the user’s feed rather than an interruption. While people are trained to ignore banner ads and the like, native ads have a better opportunity of being seen — precisely because they blend in.
Due to their effectiveness, native ads are becoming more and more popular, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all digital display ad spend. In fact, native digital display advertising spend in the US was expected to reach a new high of $87.6 billion in 2022, more than doubling in just three years.
