Native ads blend seamlessly with the surrounding content's look, feel, and functionality. At their best, they deliver heart-pounding excitement, a good story, and a desire to learn more about the product or brand.
If you’re new to native advertising or are looking for ways to boost the effectiveness of your current campaigns, take a moment to watch Range Rover’s native video ad, Taking the Dragon Challenge. It puts you in the driver's seat for an impossible climb, told through compelling storytelling that minimizes the hard sell while maximizing viewer excitement. That’s native advertising at work and just one of its many benefits.
Let’s dive into the full list of native advertising benefits and explore how to get the most value from your spend.
What Is Native Advertising?
What is native advertising? It’s an expanding market, expected to grow from $88.01 billion (in 2023) to $251.4 billion by 2032 (Market Research Future). The Native Advertising Market CAGR (growth rate) is expected to be around 12.37% during the forecast period (2024 - 2032). This explosive growth makes it a smart choice for advertisers navigating the challenges of ad blockers, banner fatigue, ad fraud, and clickbait skepticism.
Native ads blend in with and function like the surrounding content, creating a non-disruptive ad experience for consumers. Examples include promoted listings, sponsored articles, and branded videos that match the platform they appear on. A user browsing an app or scrolling through YouTube might mistake a native ad for just another piece of organic content, and that’s exactly the point.
What Is Programmatic Native Advertising?
Programmatic native advertising automates the placement process. While its ultimate goal remains the same, which is to blend in and run ads that match the platform’s content and design, the programmatic layer uses AI-driven tech to serve relevant ads in real time across apps, websites, and social platforms. This removes the hassle of manual campaign management and helps advertisers reach audiences with greater precision.
Types Of Native Advertising
Each native ad type serves a different marketing goal or platform requirement. The three most common are: in-feed ads, sponsored content, and native banners. Let’s delve deeper into the types of native advertising to better understand their various purposes in capturing audience attention in a way that aligns with a user’s ad experience.
In-Feed
You’re scrolling through Meta to catch up on Harry's cliff-climbing adventure, and suddenly a video about an extreme race through the Grand Canyon appears and grabs your attention. You watch it, intrigued, only to find it’s a sportswear ad. That’s an in-feed native ad doing its job. In-feed native ads blend in with consumed content; this is true in apps, websites, or social platforms. Designed right, they add value to the users, whether for entertainment, to sell like experiences or on-target products, or to educate them—all without disrupting the browsing experience.
Sponsored
Sponsored content includes articles, videos, or podcasts clearly labeled as “sponsored.” Browsing a consumer health site, you might see a sponsored ad about the benefits of physical fitness in reducing the risk of Type II Diabetes, or a podcast of two chiropractors discussing simple stretches to ease lower back pain. Native ads mimic the content where it’s featured and it may be sponsored, but it’s valuable and feels like content, not an ad.
The best sponsored content mimics the platform’s editorial tone, offering utility to the reader while delivering a brand message.
Native Banner
Native ad banners mimic the look and feel of the content around them, whether that’s a blog post, a news article, or a subscription-based email. They aren’t flashy, trying to gain attention like traditional banners might. Instead, they’re subtle, contextual, and less disruptive than traditional banners. But like their flashier cousins, native display ads still need smart design to draw higher engagement.
Native Advertising Example: The Kosher.com App
Let’s talk about real results.
Next Millennium gave them access to exclusive demand, multiple bidders, and precise control over ad quality and relevance. After replacing MREC ads with native formats, Kosher.com immediately saw a 70% lift in ARPDAU and higher eCPMs.
How Much Does Native Advertising Cost?
How much does native advertising cost? With any native advertising campaign, pricing varies based on ad formats, audience targeting, and platform. Common models include:
- CPM (Cost per Mille): Pay per 1,000 impressions
- CPC (Cost per Click): Pay only when someone clicks
Advertisers schedule campaigns to suit their budgets. Costs can range widely depending on the targeting precision and geography (e.g., CPMs are typically higher in the U.S. than in Canada or Australia). The more refined your targeting strategy, the better your return on spend.
Setting a strong strategy upfront will help advertisers hit their targets and get better return on spend with their native advertising offers.
Benefits Of Native Advertising
As the Kosher.com example described, native advertising offers many benefits beyond increased ARPDAU. Investing in native advertising campaigns is worth the gains businesses receive from these placements, both in better engagement and brand visibility. Native advertising continues to grow, with U.S. advertisers projected to spend over $400 billion on native display advertising by the end of 2025 (The Drum).
Here are eight core reasons advertisers continue to invest in native placements:
1. Optimized Ad Visibility
Optimized ad visibility gives advertisers confidence that their ads will only appear in contexts that match the user intent and browsing habits they are targeting. If a user is interested in high-performance sports cars, as well-designed as they are, no F10 truck ads should appear. Likewise, F10 truck ads will appear where they are relevant, perhaps in construction-related content or agricultural feeds. Ad content that appeals to the user’s interest, like a podcast discussing the merits of turbochargers or advanced engine management, achieves better engagement and higher response rates.
2. Improved User Engagement
Great content sparks reactions and digital engagement is about crafting experiences that resonate with users. Or, like our earlier Dragon Challenge example, it pulls viewers in, holds their attention, and keeps them coming back. Native ads that feel natural and relevant whether a podcast, blog, or video will drive more interactions and repeat exposure.
3. Enhanced Ad Relevance And Personalization
This is where good data comes in. Enhanced Ad relevance and personalization are only possible through good data analytics and some juicy first-party data. Too often, an algorithm might register a user viewing one video and toss a bunch of like ads at them in response, when in reality, it was a one-and-done experience for the user. With Native ads, the more they mimic what the user is consuming and are personalized to their tastes, the more accepting users are to see more since the ads match their browsing habits. This knowledge aligns with the stat that 70% of consumers prefer content versus ads to learn about a product (Responsify). Good content is still king, especially in native advertising.
4. Higher Click-Through Rates (CTR)
A native ad's CTR is 8.8x higher than the average display ad (eMarketer) thanks to its nonintrusive format and contextual relevance. A higher CTR increases purchase intent significantly, up to 18% (Tinuiti), influenced by factors like product perception and positive shopping experience. Ad formats can make a difference. Research shows native ads with rich media have 60% higher conversion rates (SmartyAds), which is good news for advertisers.
Need proof? Learn why diversifying ad formats drives revenue.
5. Less Intrusive User Experience
Due to the seamless content, users are less susceptible to ad blindness when it comes to native ads for all the reasons we’ve already discussed. Native ads respect the browser’s journey and are meant to enhance it, offering little jewels along the way that you might not have thought of on your own but were glad you found when you did. Although ad blockers may still block native ads, the ads are designed to be less easily blocked than traditional display ads.
6. Better Brand Awareness And Recall
It can be startling to learn that less than 15% of users will remember the last ad they saw (Infolinks), but when native ads align with a user’s search or interests, that number jumps. When native ads become an organic part of a user’s objective, user focus deepens. Users spend about the same time consuming native ad content as they do editorial content (Ignite Visibility), increasing both awareness and recall.
7. Boosted Credibility And Trust
Nobody likes clickbait. It’s frustrating to click on an ad that promises a solution to all your problems only to end up sifting through vague content with the real message buried like it’s hiding in the lost city of Atlantis.
Native advertising works best when it’s honest, helpful, and contextually relevant and delivering exactly what the headline promised. When that happens, it’s like stumbling upon those fabled gold-paved streets of Atlantis: rare, rewarding, and worth the journey.
Keeping content relevant builds trust. When ads feel natural and actually deliver value, brand perception improves, credibility rises, and real loyalty starts to form. That may be why users view native ads 53% more than banner ads (Search Engine Journal).
8. Effective For Mobile Audiences
With U.S. users 14% more addicted to their phones in 2025 and spending over 5 hours a day on their phones (Harmony Healthcare), native ads are tailor-made for mobile. They appear front and center, fit the screen format, and avoid clutter, which makes them more engaging and more effective at converting on-the-go users.
For instance, having downtime on commutes, consumers can browse to their heart's content, looking for something to entertain, inform, and share, essentially, to pass the time. Native ads are naturally suited to mobile formats, making them more engaging and viewable on smaller screens.
Native Advertising Tips And Considerations
Ad transparency and authenticity are non-negotiable. Effective native advertising strikes a careful balance between engaging content and genuine value for the user. It takes strategic thinking, a strong grasp of what’s working in the space, and a thoughtful execution plan.
Here are some key ways to create native ads that perform—without compromising user trust:
- Create emotional connections. Use relatable faces in the imagery or evocative settings, like a winding road inviting the viewer toward their next adventure.
- Leverage movement. Subtle animation or video can catch the eye and spark curiosity.
- Blend in naturally. Think like a wildlife photographer building a screen to blend in with the forest. It creates the impression, “I belong here,” and doesn’t frighten away the locals. Ads should feel like they belong in the environment.
- Do what you say. Follow through on your promise. If the headline offers tips for foot health, the content better deliver, Birkenstock did this in their Ugly for a Reason campaign.
- Test, then test again. Optimization is never a one-and-done process.
Next Millennium Drives Native Advertising Success Through Programmatic Advertising
The right partner helps. At Next Millennium, we’ve taken the guesswork out of the process for you making native advertising easier, and smarter. Our team of creatives and data scientists design campaigns that deliver real results, like Kosher.com’s 70% ARPDAU lift following an ad format shift that boosted eCPM and user engagement.
We offer exclusive access to premium publisher inventory, innovative ad formats, and AI-driven optimization that routinely achieves benchmark-beating results for all our clients. Consumers trust native ads. Brands trust us. That’s a winning combination.
We’re ready when you are. Book a discovery call today.