Companies like TripleLift that created the programmatic native category are now in their awkward tween years. Cue Advertible, a “native-as-a-service” programmatic vendor, as put by co-founder and CEO Tom Anderson.
Despite the backlash against MFA websites, there is still no industry standard to define MFA. So the 4A’s is hosting monthly meetings between buyers and sellers to nail down more explicit criteria for what constitutes MFA.
Reddit launched a new native ad unit Thursday, four months after discontinuing all programmatic advertising on its site on April 30. The offering, called Conversation Placement, appears in comment threads on Reddit sandwiched between the original post above and the first comment in the thread below. The ads are available through Reddit’s direct sales channels […]
It’s been a whirlwind year of acquisitions, near mergers, SPACs and pre-IPO filings for companies in the content recommendation space. In September 2020, the proposed mega merger between Outbrain and Taboola fell apart. In January, Taboola announced plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company. Three months later, Outbrain filed confidential S-1 paperwork […]
Brands want to spend more on native, and plista, the native arm of WPP’s Xaxis, is hoping to oblige through a partnership with dynamic creative optimization platform Jivox. After several months of testing, the duo rolled out a solution on Tuesday to help plista and GroupM clients create and buy native ads programmatically and personalize […]
Outbrain acquired native DSP Zemanta for an undisclosed sum Tuesday. The deal will bring together Outbrain’s scaled native supply with Zemanta’s demand, laying the groundwork for Outbrain to position itself as a leader in the still-nascent programmatic native ecosystem. Outbrain bought the DSP because it expects native advertising to become larger than display advertising in […]
Programmatic native is cleaning up its act. Content recommendation engines like Taboola and Outbrain provide an easy incremental revenue stream for publishers. But their cost-per-click model, which favors performance over quality, enables traffic arbitrage and creates brand safety risks. To account for those concerns, native exchanges like TripleLift, Connatix, Nativo and Sharethrough have leveraged direct […]
Sponsored content is going programmatic, courtesy of a partnership between native ad company Nativo, and demand-side platform The Trade Desk. GroupM’s native ad division, Plista, will be a key buyer in the new partnership. The deals transact via a private marketplace, but with fixed pricing. Nativo will add in a programmatic guaranteed option later this […]
TripleLift is throwing its hat into the server-side header bidding ring. On Tuesday, it rolled out its wrapper, Apex, which lets publishers bring in demand for their in-feed native ad placements. TripleLift will run a first-price auction among all participating partners, a shift from the OpenRTB spec of a second-price auction that could result in […]
Native is a big deal to The Atlantic, where sponsored content will comprise 75% of digital revenue this year. It employs a 30-person team, dubbed Atlantic Re:think, to create campaigns for clients like Porsche, TIAA and Cathay Pacific. The team operates with the philosophy that “engagement is an art and science,” said Michael Monroe, the […]
Advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers pay heed: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released an enforcement policy Tuesday that outlines which forms of native advertising it deems acceptable and which it deems deceptive. A key thread in the guidelines is that the user needs to know if content is an ad before she clicks and/or consumes content. […]
For the past three years, Ancestry has used content to drive sales, writing and promoting blog posts like “Do You Have Royal Blood?” to encourage people to buy its product. This strategy goes against conventional wisdom, in which banners are typically meant for driving sales and content to drive awareness. “Every piece [of content] we […]
If someone asked you to rattle off the big buzzwords in media, it’s a pretty good bet mobile, native ads and programmatic would be somewhere near the top of your list. Google has just knocked down all three in a single gesture, allowing its publisher customers to expose native ad inventory in their mobile apps to buyers […]
Millennials are experts at ignoring what they don’t care about – regardless of ad blockers. “Millennials don’t necessarily follow the rules of marketing,” said Kathryn Minshew, CEO and founder of millennial-centric career and job site The Muse, speaking at eMarketer’s Attention event in New York City on Tuesday. “They don’t look where you want them to […]
TripleLift closed $10.5 million in Series B funding Thursday, led by Edison Partners. The in-feed native advertising company will use the funds to double its workforce from 50 to 100 employees and expand internationally, starting in Europe with the UK. The company will also devote a portion to research and development. “My hope is that […]
Outbrain will allow publishers to sell native in-feed placements via their direct sales channels. In beta testing with four publishers, publishers can offer the units on a CPC or CPM basis. “Over the last six months, we’ve had more and more publishers dipping their toe into native ads,” said Matt Crenshaw, Outbrain’s VP of product […]
Earlier this week, Mary Engle, the Federal Trade Commission’s associate director of advertising practices, suggested to attendees at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads I/O conference that publishers could be held responsible for native ads deemed misleading that run on their properties. Read the original story by AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis. Readers interested in her comments can now check out the above […]
BidSwitch on Monday announced a feature for its API that will incorporate the OpenRTB2.3 standards, opening up new sources of native supply and, according to BidSwitch GM Bob Walczak, “[enabling] a much higher degree of innovation and efficiency in the native market.” BidSwitch’s value proposition is its ability to integrate once and then connect with […]
Even as marketers increasingly see native programmatic as a part of the core digital arsenal – alongside video, display and mobile – industry leaders like Sharethrough have encountered a lag in adoption from major DSPs. Part of the problem is that the existence of technology solutions hasn’t had a chance to sink in with brands […]
Facebook’s mobile ad network seems to be a hit with developers. In the six months since it rolled out Audience Network globally, the number of apps participating has grown by a factor of five, a big jump even from Q4 2014 when the number had grown 3x. Basically, app developers are flocking to Facebook. A […]
Devs: Yahoo is looking at you. On the heels of arguably lackluster Q1 2015 earnings and the week before is NewFront event in New York City, Yahoo revealed two video ad units on Wednesday. Native in-feed video and video app install ads will now appear in Yahoo’s digital magazines and apps, as well as on desktop and […]
The singles ad would read like this: Mobile native inventory seeks demand. In an effort to act as matchmaker, global mobile ad platform Opera Mediaworks launched Tuesday a private marketplace native extension of its mobile ad exchange, Opera Mediaworks Ad Exchange (OMAX), which until now had just focused on programmatic display and video. Because the […]
If banner advertising has peaked, native advertising is still on its way up. Proponents of native cite better consumer engagement and higher rates for publishers. London-based market research firm Mintel pegged the current native advertising market at $1.8 billion, predicting it will rise to $9.4 billion by 2018. Of course, “native” is a broad term […]
Native is a bit like awkward teenager – it’s still trying to figure itself out and it just wants to fit in. Sharethrough is looking to help native advertising blend in a little better with a new unit that takes a cue from the way players like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest display third-party content on […]
Distributing the same sponsored posts across a network of sites isn’t a widespread practice – yet. While planning the media spend for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, ad agency Mediasmith turned to Distroscale, which allowed the team to leverage existing content to connect with readers about the hospital at scale. “Native advertising had a key role to […]
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) is after the kind of Washington, D.C., influencers who can impact change. But with a limited budget and a potentially boring topic, the organization needed to find a way to tell people about the vital role freight trains play in the economy. After “a difficult year for freight rail,” during […]
Native ad exchange Sharethrough has acquired UK-based content distribution platform VAN in the hopes of expanding into the European market. The acquisition price was not disclosed, but VAN’s 2013 revenue was $2 million. VAN’s sales team will be an asset, as will its strength in the automotive, entertainment and lifestyle verticals. Its clients, like UKTV, […]
Given the building momentum around native advertising and the growing number of publishers and startups seizing on the trend, it was only a matter of time before the 800-pound gorilla of ad technology threw its hat in the ring. While Google has yet to formally introduce its native offering, numerous AdExchanger sources with knowledge of […]
Last month, Slate served 100 million impressions of native ads in 30 days. For the coming fourth quarter, 15 native campaigns are in development. Some are running for a few weeks. A handful of native campaigns involve publication of dozens of posts over a year. Despite that scale, until April of this year, Slate created and […]
Men’s Health is selling mobile native advertising campaigns directly to advertisers using Sharethrough. The move is part of an expansion in Sharethrough’s business from an in-feed native ad exchange to a facilitator of native deals sold directly via SFP (Sharethrough for Publishers). As of today, all publishers will be able to sell native directly through […]
