Sentinel InsightsWhat is native advertising?Formats, rules and when it works.

Native advertising is paid media designed to fit the platform it runs on. A native ad looks and behaves like the content around it, whether that’s a post in a social feed, a recommended article under a news story or a branded feature on a publisher’s site. The one thing that sets it apart from editorial is a label telling readers it’s paid.

Brands use native ads because people scroll past banners and read content. Done honestly, native advertising puts a useful message in front of the right audience in a format they already pay attention to. Done badly, it misleads readers, and US regulators treat that as deception.

Native advertising, defined

The ad industry has argued about the definition for years. The IAB, the trade body for US digital advertising, describes native advertising as “a concept encompassing both an aspiration as well as a suite of ad products” in its Native Advertising Playbook 2.0, published in May 2019. The aspiration is paid content that’s as relevant and useful as whatever surrounds it.

In practice, three things make an ad native. It matches the visual design of the page or feed. It behaves like the surrounding content, so it scrolls, plays or opens the way the platform’s own posts do. And it carries a clear disclosure that it’s advertising.

The main native advertising formats

The IAB playbook groups native ads into three core types. Most native buying today falls into one of them, and each suits a different kind of message.

In-feed and in-content ads

These sit inside a content feed or on an article page and take on the look of the site. Sponsored posts on LinkedIn, Meta and TikTok are in-feed ads, as are sponsored listings dropped into a news site’s article stream. They’re the most common format and the easiest to buy at scale.

Content recommendation ads

These are the paid links, videos and articles that appear under or beside a story, often in a block of suggested reading. They usually send readers to an external page, such as a brand’s article or landing page. Quality varies widely between networks and sites, so placement lists matter a lot here.

Branded or native content

This is an article or video paid for by a brand and formatted like the publisher’s own editorial, usually produced with the publisher’s content team and labelled as paid. It’s the native format closest to sponsored content, which we compare in detail in our guide to sponsored content vs native advertising.

The labelling rules for native advertising in the US

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission sets the ground rules. Its guide Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses, published in December 2015, explains how to stop native ads misleading people about their commercial nature. Rules apply to every campaign, so treat what follows as an outline and get legal advice on anything specific.

The FTC guide’s practical points are easy to follow:

• Use plain labels. The FTC lists “Ad”, “Advertisement”, “Paid Advertisement” and “Sponsored Advertising Content” as terms people are likely to understand.
• Avoid vague wording. It calls “Promoted” and “Promoted Stories” at best ambiguous, and says a company’s name or logo on its own is not likely to be enough.
• Put the label where people look first. The FTC recommends placing disclosures in front of or above the headline, because labels below an ad can be missed before someone clicks.
• Label images and video too. If the main focus is an image or a video thumbnail, the disclosure may need to sit on it.

At Sentinel, every paid placement is labelled as paid, both on the page and in the client’s coverage log. It’s the simplest way to protect a brand’s credibility and stay on the right side of the rules.

Native ads compared with display ads and earned coverage

Native advertising sits between two things buyers know well. Banner ads are easy to spot and easy to ignore. Earned media carries trust because nobody paid the publisher for it.

None of these replaces the others. Native ads perform better when people have also seen your brand in coverage they trust, which is why we plan paid, placed and earned media as one campaign. Our how we work page explains the approach.

When native advertising works, and when it doesn’t

Native advertising earns its budget when you have something worth reading. A guide, a useful tool, an original piece of research or a clear explainer all fit the format. A straight sales pitch dressed up as an article usually falls flat, and readers notice.

It tends to work when:

• You have content that answers a real question your buyers ask.
• Your audience spends time in feeds or on publishers you can buy on.
• You can measure what happens after the click, such as time on page, sign-ups or demo requests.
• You’re happy to label the ad plainly and still expect people to read it.

It tends to struggle when the landing page is thin, when the brand has no credibility in the category yet, or when the only goal is cheap clicks. In those cases, earned coverage or a sponsored feature with a well-matched publisher through our media placement service is often the better first step. Brands in finance, healthcare, legal services or crypto face extra rules on claims, so their native ads need compliance review before launch.

How to buy native advertising well

A native campaign is only as good as the planning behind it. This is the order we work in.

1. Start with the audience. Decide who must see the ad and where they already read, watch and scroll.
2. Choose formats that fit the content. In-feed units for short, useful posts. Recommendation units for articles. Branded content for longer explanations.
3. Set placement lists before launch. Review sites and placements for relevance and context, and exclude the ones that don’t suit your brand.
4. Write for the environment. A headline that works in a LinkedIn feed won’t necessarily work under a news story.
5. Label every unit clearly. Follow the FTC guidance above on wording and placement.
6. Check weekly and move budget. Cut placements that bring the wrong readers and shift spend to the ones that work.

Judge the results on what readers do after the click, not on click-through rate alone. Time on page, scroll depth, newsletter sign-ups and demo requests tell you whether the ad reached people who cared. A cheap click from someone who leaves in three seconds costs more than it looks, so report cost per useful action alongside reach.

Sentinel’s media buying management is 15% of media spend with a $2,000 minimum monthly fee, and sponsored placements are charged at publisher cost plus 20 to 30%. Full details are on our pricing page.

If you’d like a native campaign planned around your audience and labelled honestly from the first unit, our digital media buying service is the place to start.