According to Emarketer, the U.S. native ad spending in 2023 is $97.46 billion.
The rate of rise from 2019 to 2023 is 11% year over year. The reason for the rise is that native ads boost the user experience. They engage users and provide high click-through rates.
However, these merits are possible only if the native ads are implemented correctly and optimized to be relevant to users. Relevancy and improvement in ad revenue are possible only if you connect with the best native ad network.
Hence, to get you started, this article compares and reviews the ten best native advertising networks in 2024. It helps you understand how to choose and lets you choose the best one that meets your needs.
Before going straight to the list, let’s quickly refresh the basics.
Table of Contents
What Is Native Ad Network? Why Is It Important?
Native advertising platforms or ad networks connect publishers and advertisers looking to run native ads. They help with the seamless integration of native ads into the website content.
By nature, native ads gel with content. This helps native advertising platforms display native ads in a non-intrusive way to improve user experience.
Best native ad platforms give publishers an advantage in easy integration and targeting specific demographics through relevant ads. This will lead to higher CTRs and ad revenue.
Types of Native Advertising With Examples
There are different formats in native advertising that publishers can use for different use cases. A few of them are covered below.
In-feed native ads: These are native ads you usually find in news feeds or social media feeds. This can be static or dynamic, often denoted as “sponsored” or “promoted.”
Source: sharethrough
In-content native ads- The ads that will be placed between content in the website or app. It is added in-between paragraphs or at the end of the articles.
Content recommendation ads– These are widgets that appear at the bottom of the article, suggesting users with the list of articles or products. It is also often denoted as an “ad” or “ promoted”.
Source: Native advertising institute.
Sponsored or promoted listings: These native ads appear in the search engine listing, often marked as “ sponsored”. They also appear on the right side of the search results.
Nine Best Native Ad Networks 2024
Outbrain
Trusted by some of the tier-1 publishers, including The Guardian, Men’s Health, and BBC, Outbrain is the finest native ad networks. It enables publishers to get access to leading Demand-side platforms (DSPs) with programmatic native ad demands.
It supports various ad formats and has a content recirculation feature for publishers to recirculate the content. Additionally, it provides more opportunities for visitors to read the content and navigate around the website.
Besides, if you’ve AMP pages and looking to serve native ads on them, then Outbrain is the best choice for you.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | 10 million+ monthly pageviews |
| Pricing model | CPC and CPM |
| CPM and RPM rate | $0.37 – $3.00 and $0.37- $1.12 |
| Minimum payment threshold | $50 |
| Payment terms | NET60 or NET90 |
| Targeting options | Geo, interest, topic, device, and OS |
| Supported ad formats | In-feed and in-article for video and display ads |
Taboola
Just like Outbrain, Taboola is one of the most preferred native ad networks that has partnered with some of the top publishers, including USA Today, The Huffington Post, and NYTimes. Taboola offers native advertising solutions in various forms. Using the “Taboola Choice” feature, users can remove the ads and give feedback on why they did it.
Eligibility Criteria and Benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | 1 million+ monthly pageviews |
| Pricing model | CPC |
| CPM and RPM rate (max.) | ~$2.00 |
| Minimum payment threshold | $100 |
| Payment terms | NET45 |
| Targeting options | Locations, affinity, and demographics |
| Supported ad formats | Recommended widget, in-feed, in-article, and video |
Suggested Read: An Inside Look at Taboola’s Publisher Products
Nativo
Nativo is an advanced platform for deploying and serving native ads on a website that exemplifies ad content within the format of publishing streams. The ad network has worked with premium publishers, including Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal. Besides ad formats and targeting options, it offers AdStore, which enables publishers to select and activate several monetization partners simultaneously.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | No minimum traffic |
| Pricing model | eCPM or vCPM |
| CPM rate (max.) | ~$7 |
| Minimum payment threshold | $50 |
| Payment terms | NET45, and NET60 |
| Targeting Options | Geo, device type, and network |
| Supported ad formats | In-feed articles, and in-feed social |
Revcontent
According to its website, Revcontent offers 250B+ content recommendations per month and has worked with many tier-1 publishers, including Forbes, Conde Nast, and Wayfair.
A publisher can get a dedicated account management team to help with campaign performance. With Revcontent, you can monetize the native ad placements by running header bidding and also serve native ads for mobile apps.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | 3 million+ monthly pageviews |
| Pricing model | vCPM and CPC |
| CPM rate (max.) | Varies (Upto ~$5) |
| Minimum payment threshold | $50 |
| Payment terms | NET30 |
| Targeting options | Geo, device, OS, topic, brand, network, and re-targeting |
| Supported ad formats | In-feed, in-article, and recommended widgets |
MGID
MGID is a popular ad network for publishers and suitable for all types of niches. With a large network of advertisers, it has the potential to bring decent native demand for your ad inventory. MGID’s Traffic Insights feature lets publishers know which location has brought more conversions. With the help of Traffic Insights, publishers can divide their traffic into three categories, i.e., Low competition, Hot opportunities, and Best performing.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | 3,000+ unique daily visitors (or 90,000+ monthly visitors) |
| Pricing model | CPM, Revenue share, and CPC |
| CPM rate (max.) | Up to $3.00 |
| Minimum payment threshold | $100 |
| Payment terms | NET30 |
| Targeting options | Geo, device type, OS type, language-based, connection/network |
| Supported ad formats | Header content, video, and sidebar widgets |
Yahoo Gemini
It is one of the best native ad networks that offers both native and search traffic for marketers. The platform gets over 60 billion ad impressions per month for big publishing partners.
They support various intrusive ad formats that blend well with the page’s surroundings to provide a seamless ad experience. Top websites like ESPN, ABC News, Apple News, and MSN use Yahoo Gemini for selected locations.
Marketers can use Gemini to target ads to particular demographics, interests, and even locations. Their reporting dashboard gives access to extensive data to get useful insights.
Eligible criteria and benefits
| Minimum traffic required | More than 50% of traffic should come from the US, UK, and France |
| Pricing model | CPM and CPC |
| Targeting options | Country, OS, Device, Region, Dayparting, etc. |
| Supported ad Formats | Image ad, video ad, carousel ad, app install ad, yahoo mail ad, and moments ad. |
Sharethrough
Sharethrough brings premium native demands and offers dynamic native templating technology that helps publishers to create and optimize native ads for higher CPM rates and viewability. Via Sharethrough’s Native Ad Generator, you can preview a live demo or create a custom ad.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | No minimum traffic |
| Offer types | CPM, vCPM |
| CPM rate (max.) | Up to $3.00 |
| Minimum payment threshold | -NA- |
| Payment terms | NET30 |
| Targeting options | Geo, device type, demographics, and interests |
| Supported ad formats | In-feed, in-article for video and display ads |
TripleLift
The TripleLift is one of the renowned native ad networks that helps web and OTT publishers to monetize their native ad inventory. The network provides a dedicated account manager and support team to help and assist in the ad campaign.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum traffic required | No minimum traffic |
| Pricing model | CPM and CPC |
| CPM rate (max.) | Up to $3.00 |
| Minimum payment threshold | $50 |
| Payment terms | NET30 |
| Targeting options | Geo, device type, and network. |
| Supported ad formats | In-feed, in-article, and carousel formats for display and video ads |
NativeAds
If 50% of your traffic comes from the United States, then NativeAds is worth a try. Via NativeAds, you can create and monetize across all device types, i.e., desktops, tablets, and phones. Also, the in-built dashboard of NativeAds can help you to track the performance of ad campaigns.
Eligibility criteria and benefits:
| Minimum Traffic Required | 100k+ monthly pageviews |
| Pricing model | CPM and CPC |
| CPM Rate (max.) | Up to $2.00 |
| Minimum payment Threshold | $50 |
| Payment terms | NET60, NET65, and NET90 |
| Targeting options | Interest and location-based |
| Supported ad formats | In-stream, sticky footer, content recommendation, and in-image |
Factors to Be Considered Before Onboarding a Native Ad Network
Although the above-mentioned ad networks will help you to get the maximum possible revenue for your native ad inventory, there are a few points that you should know and consider before integrating a new network into your website.
- Ad quality: Though ad networks can get ads to fill your native ad impressions, ad quality varies greatly. Several fraudsters use the networks for traffic arbitraging, leading your users to fake content landing pages (with slides mostly).
- Pricing model: The pricing model of ad networks varies with circumstances; e.g., Outbrain doesn’t offer a CPC model at certain times of the day.
- Setup process: A few ad networks (for example, Media.net) require manual set-up for each website a publisher owns. That means if a publisher has 5 different websites, he/she has to manually set up the ad network for the individual network. All of the websites require approval from the network.
So, before integrating a new network into your websites, consider the points. Also, check if the network has an updated dashboard or analytics, supports various ad formats, and offers sophisticated targeting for advertisers. If advertisers can target accurately, your users will likely see the relevant ads.
It is difficult to choose the leading one after checking all these factors. If you don’t have previous experience, the choice might go wrong in few cases. Contact us! Our team can help you find the best adtech monetization partner that offers native advertising solutions that best fit your needs..
Insider tip💡: If you haven’t considered running display ads and native ads together, here’s why you should. Also, note that you can run native ads via Google Ad Manager, and to do so, you aren’t required to partner with any of the native ad networks separately. But the demand will be limited, and Google won’t have to compete with anyone, which, in turn, results in fewer CPMs.
What’s Next?
The list presents some of the top native ad networks in the industry.
To pick up the right native ad network and monetize your inventory effectively, you must test them and measure their results. From our experience, it’s better to identify the banner ads that aren’t earning you well and then make them compete against native ads.
So, you’ll show the best-paying ads to the users – native ads or banner ads. If you need to place “Content recommendations” at the end of the articles, you must partner with an ad network (refer to the above list). You cannot put them against regular banner ads.
Have questions? Let us know.
