What is native advertising?
Native advertising is paid content designed to match the look and feel of the platform it appears on, such as sponsored articles, in-feed social posts or "recommended" links under news stories. It is less disruptive than banners, but it must be clearly labelled as advertising, and regulators such as the US FTC require disclosures so readers are not misled.
Native advertising can be bought programmatically: the OpenRTB native specification sends headline, image and description separately, and the publisher renders them in its own style. Content recommendation widget widgets from companies such as Teads (formerly Outbrain) and Taboola are a major channel.
Native ads have a quality problem at the bottom end: clickbait headlines, deceptive landing pages and heavy use as a source of sourced traffic for traffic arbitrage sites.