Programmatic Advertising: The Wild West of Native Ads 🤠🐎🌵

By Max Legrand · GreyFox Ads · A French perspective on programmatic advertising

A Media Trader once told me: “Native Ads are great for traffic-generation campaigns, but when it comes to formats, it's the Wild West! You never really know what you're buying!” And he was absolutely right. 😉

Why native advertising is not a single format

Native Ads typically combine text and imagery in a layout adapted to a publisher's environment. That flexibility is the appeal: the ad can feel more integrated with the content around it. But it also means there are many very different user experiences behind one buying category.

For a traffic-generation campaign, placement type can influence how often people click, whether those clicks are intentional, and what happens after they reach the advertiser's website.

Seven families of native ad formats

1. In-feed: inside the publisher's content feed

These placements sit within a feed, often on a homepage, and can attract strong click-through rates. They are comparatively scarce across parts of the traditional Open Web. Example: the Yahoo homepage.

2. Bottom-of-page recommendation tiles

These appear among recommended stories below editorial content. Some pages contain twenty or more recommendations. Volumes can be substantial and CTR can be modest, but low CPMs may produce attractive CPCs. Examples: Outbrain and Taboola.

3. In-banner native

Text-and-image creative is assembled within familiar IAB display dimensions, such as 300×250 or 970×250. Inventory is widely available, although the incremental benefit over a conventional banner isn't always obvious. Examples cited: Google AdSense and Xandr's Natisse Assembly.

4. In-mail

An ad appears inside an inbox, visually resembling a received message. It may deliver high CTR, but available inventory is limited. Example: SFR.

5. In-notification

The ad appears as a mobile push notification. Click-through can be attractive, but buyers should recognise that this is not the same context as a placement alongside publisher content. Example: ADRENALEAD.

6. In-bubble

A floating bubble appears, often at the bottom right of the screen. High click-through rates can coincide with high bounce rates (some clicks may be accidental rather than expressions of interest).

7. In-picture

The ad is embedded within another image. Low CPMs may translate into attractive CPCs, while bounce rates can remain elevated. As ever, the post-click experience matters.

Native advertising formats compared

(These are qualitative observations from campaign practice, not universal benchmarks: actual performance depends on publisher, creative, audience and measurement.)

The transparency problem in programmatic native buying

Here's the catch: the precise visual treatment is not necessarily explicit in the information exposed to buyers through a bid request. Native protocols can carry asset and placement-related information, but that doesn't always tell a trader exactly how the ad will render on the page.

And when a DSP does not expose the SSP seat or seller-level detail clearly, identifying the actual native experience becomes harder still. Buyers may need to investigate the supply path and verify real placements rather than assume that all “native” inventory is interchangeable.

This is why placement-level optimisation and supply-path transparency matter so much.

Why CTR alone can be misleading

A high CTR is not automatically a good outcome. For traffic campaigns, look at bounce rate, engaged sessions, conversion quality and cost per meaningful visit alongside CPC and CTR. A format that generates lots of accidental clicks can look brilliant in a DSP report and disappoint on the landing page.

The same logic applies to small-rendering placements and other formats where the user experience can distort headline performance indicators.

How GreyFox Ads helps Media Traders understand what they're buying

At GreyFox Ads, we filter native inventory carefully and provide granular information about the sellers activated. The aim is straightforward: give Media Traders a clearer view of the actual environments behind their native campaigns, and help them make better optimisation decisions.

We also advise programmatic sales houses and trading desks on curation, supply-path optimisation and inventory quality across the French Open Web. You can explore our approach to programmatic curation or learn more about our Master Deal.

Original LinkedIn post: Read the original discussion.