In January of this year I set out to do something that nobody has yet done - map out the entire global native advertising technology landscape. This turned out to be more challenging than originally thought.
The research led me to create eleven categories for native advertising - two of which, 'Social Media' and 'Social Media Native Ad Management' are featured below.
In total, the landscape contains nearly 300 technology vendors which help facilitate, optimize and/or track native advertising. For brands out there specifically looking to beef up your paid social media gravitas, consider this article your most complete vendor resource.
For a platform to be considered native, it had to adhere to one condition - it must offer paid advertising where the ad content matches the form, feel and function of the non-paid material of the medium on which it appears.
For example, display advertising on Facebook is not native advertising, however, in-feed units are.
Click image to access full screen, hi resolution JPG and PDF, research methodology, and definitions.
Since publishing the entire native advertising technology landscape a few dozen companies have communicated to us that they were left off. These vendors have been added to the list and will be included in future renditions and are featured here.
If you notice any vendors or networks missing please leave a comment below so I can update my list for the future.
Social Media
This was one of the easiest categories to research. It includes all of the usual suspects, along with a few not-so-usual ones. The list is likely missing some international social media platforms I'm not familiar with - if you know of any that do native advertising in some way, shape or form let us know.
- BigOven - Native advertising that reaches the household decision maker throughout the cooking cycle
- Digg - In-feed sponsored content units
- Facebook - In-feed sponsored content units
- Foursquare - Geo-location mobile units
- Kik - Messaging app geared toward millennials offering promoted chats
- LinkedIn - In-feed sponsored content units
- Twitter - In-feed sponsored content units
- Imgur - World's largest image-sharing community. Promoted posts.
- Instagram - In-feed sponsored content units
- Medium - Long-form native advertising units. Added after the infographic was published.
- Reddit - In-feed sponsored content units
- Snapchat - In-feed sponsored content units
- Tumblr - Long-form native advertising units. Creatrs content studio.
- SlideShare - In-feed sponsored content units
- Pinterest - In-feed sponsored content units
- YouTube - TrueView video
- StumbleUpon - In-feed sponsored content units
- Quora - Brand-sponsored questions - still in beta
- Tango - A chat app and social network with native advertising options
- Xing - A professional network similar to LinkedIn. Very popular in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Added after the infographic was published.
Social Media Native Ad Management
This list of vendors has sprouted up around the above social media networks. Many do both search and social advertising, but to make this list they had to at least do native social.
Some are very specific to a single social network, while others tackle several of them at once. These tools help marketers scale, optimize and measure paid social media native.
- 4C - Social media advertising platform
- AdEspresso - Facebook and Instagram advertising platform
- AdGlow - Social media advertising platform
- Adlucent - Facebook and Instagram advertising platform. Search advertising.
- AdParlor - Social media advertising platform
- adQuadrant - Facebook and Instagram only
- AdStage - Social media and search advertising platform
- Ahalogy - Platform for delivering native advertising on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram. Available for select publishers, too.
- Ampush - Social media advertising platform
- Automate Ads - Social media and search advertising platform
- Balihoo - Facebook and search advertising platform
- Bounce Exchange - Social media and search advertising platform
- Catvertiser - Facebook advertising platform
- Evocalize - Social media advertising platform
- Facelift - Social media advertising platform
- Funnely - Facebook advertising platform
- Kenshoo - Social media and search advertising platform
- Marin Software - Social media and search advertising platform
- MyLikes - Social media advertising platform
- Nanigans - Social media advertising platform
- Pagemodo - Facebook advertising platform
- Perion - Social media distribution. Ad unit (native/non-native) contextualization tool for publishers.
- Polygraph - Social media advertising platform
- Qwaya - Facebook advertising platform
- Refinedads - Facebook and search advertising platform
- ReFUEL4 - Facebook and Instagram advertising platform
- Seevibes - Social media advertising platform
- Sidecar - Facebook and search advertising platform
- Smartly - Facebook and Instagram only
- Sprinkler - Enterprise social media platform. Includes native advertising
- Social Ads Tool - Facebook advertising platform and managed service
- Social Code - Enterprise social media advertising platform
- SocialFlow - Organic and paid social media distribution
- StitcherAds - Social media advertising platform
- Upcast - Facebook advertising platform
- Wordstream - Facebook native advertising and paid search platform
According to AdYouLike, total native advertising spend is expected to reach $59 billion next year globally. Up to 60% of that spend will be on social media networks like the ones described above.
If you're not already familiar with this ecosystem I recommend bookmarking this article. The future is native and there's no turning back.