Nativo

Nativo’s founder, Justin “JC” Choi, checks in post-acquisition to share how his tech is helping power Life360’s new advertising business.

The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.

As AI agents begin to mediate everything from search to purchase, marketers are being forced to confront the reality that they must treat machines as customers.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Julie Rubash, vice president of legal at Nativo. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has significant ramifications for publishers and their handling of consumer data, not just in California but across the country and […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, founder and CEO at Nativo. The pace of change in advertising is accelerating, but technology is no longer the sole driver. Instead, privacy regulations and heated competition among […]

Slow-loading ads are still a perennial problem for publishers. Wise Publishing, a Toronto-based publisher of personal finance content with around 5 million monthly unique visitors, acquires a significant portion of its traffic through paid channels. But if an ad loads slowly and a visitor leaves, so does that monetization opportunity. “Dealing with latency is incredibly […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, founder and CEO at Nativo. The age of the platform has, without a doubt, taken a serious toll on publishers. Direct content consumption on publisher sites gave way to content discovery via […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, founder and CEO at Nativo. Today’s publishers are under pressure from seemingly countless external forces. They face downward pressure on ad prices, consolidation of spend within the duopoly (and now, the triopoly), […]

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 […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Chris Rooke, senior vice president of strategy and operations at Nativo. While some expect a surge in programmatic native this year, publishers must understand the risks that come with it […]

Could it be that we’re entering the second generation of sponsored content? Nativo CEO Justin Choi thinks so. His case in point: US News & World Report, which started its sponsored content studio, BrandFuse, in 2012. “Publishers are shifting from the first gear of native, which was adoption and seeing if they could find success […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Chris Rooke, senior vice president of strategy and operations at Nativo. There is no broad consensus among marketers for defining success in native advertising. That’s not surprising since native is […]

Horizon Media had done plenty of direct-to-publisher native campaigns to promote shows for its entertainment clients, including The History Channel. But the campaigns lacked scale. “Curating these experiences in a way where we can impact scale is vitally important when we’re trying to drive a [Nielsen] ratings number,” said Joe Hadari, SVP and managing director […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s recent update to the OpenRTB guidelines (PDF), which incorporate dynamic in-feed ad units, is generating lots of noise around programmatic, real-time […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. Over the past several months, the debate on banners has heated up – and gone in the wrong direction. While I have read some interesting […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. When I was discussing native advertising with a venture capitalist in 2012, he flat-out proclaimed, “The New York Times would never do this.” He never […]

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 […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. Engaging consumers through authentic brand content is more important than ever for drawing them into the marketing funnel. And the best measure of successful brand […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. Online advertising grew up on a foundation of interruption. Audiences sought interesting, relevant content, and advertisers competed with editorial for their attention. Marketers then evaluated […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. Last December, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a native advertising playbook to establish a common framework for the industry. Since then, native has become […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. The Media Rating Council (MRC) hit yet another milestone [PDF] in their viewable impression crusade on Monday by lifting the advisory on viewable impressions for […]

Programmatic and real-time bidding capabilities are quickly emerging as differentiating factors in the native advertising landscape. But as more companies enter the space offering similar features, telling them apart becomes increasingly challenging. Nativo and TripleLift are two such native ad companies that both offer programmatic capabilities. Here’s a snapshot look at how they differ. For […]

It seems everyone and their mothers are pushing native ad units and tools to support them. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and most recently AOL all have native, in-feed ad units. As these formats catch on, ad tech companies like Sharethrough, Nativo and DistroScale have developed tools designed to automate ad distribution across different publishers’ sites while matching […]

One of the reasons that digital publishers like to talk about native is obvious: it resembles the age-old practice of high-priced “advertorials” and the natural customization of the placement dictates that marketers must deal directly with the site’s sales team. At the same time, those reasons have left agencies feeling frozen out by native ads, […]