I found this interesting video on Bing native ads. It explains how they are placed within an article. There are additional types of native ads that I’ll discuss below.
Native ads can be used in newspaper or magazine type sites where you have a lot of article titles. You probably saw it on Yahoo where it says that it’s Sponsored Content. I’ve also seen it on my local news site.
How to Set Up A Native Ad
The best native ads don’t look like ads. They look like an interesting story that someone would want to click on.
The best places to start with native ads are revcontent and spoutable. You can get started for $100. Many of the other places have a $1000 minimum.
Outbrain (I’m not sure what their minimum is…they’re a highly recommended company from everyone I’ve talked to) has a great resource page. Read this article and see examples of the best native ads.
Managing Your Native Ad
When you start with $100 you need to “mine” for good widgets first and target only the good ones. There are a lot of bad sites out there that are nothing but ads and it’s hard to get noticed. You can do this easily by going to these sites and examine the code and find the widget or site id’s. You can also that in conjunction with a spy tool like adplexity.
Make sure you’re tracking conversions and how much money you make on the back end. If you’re not making money, change up your ad. Remember that people get ad blindness after seeing it a few times.