Native advertising is one of the industry's hot topics right now, so we have introduced this three-part series to delve into the phenomenon from the perspective of a technology company and premium ad network (Martini Media), an agency (Morpheus Media), and a SaaS platform (Flite). Native advertising is the next generation of rich media advertising. For publishers, it means higher CPMs, higher revenues and less commoditization by ad networks. For advertisers, native ads offer a more integrated brand experience, which in turn defeats banner blindness and drives engagement with consumers. If you're not exploring native advertising, you run the risk that your inventory will be commoditized in the long term. Below you will learn what you need to know about how to build native ads, the constraints of the medium and how to surpass them to build a scalable native ad business. Defining the Ad Product Native ad products gained momentum with the growth of social media, where sponsored content was placed seamlessly next to a user’s tweets or status updates. If you’re a publisher developing native ads, consider what makes your site unique. This can mean pulling in your site’s own content alongside branded content. For example, Buzzfeed offers a native product that allows a sponsor to display entertaining content in a similar way to how editorial content is shown. The signature buttons -- LOL, FAIL, OMG, CUTE, etc. -- allow users to participate with the native ad in the same way they engage with the site at large. Another example is Forbes, which is known for having great lists. It’s common to find content like The Best Companies to Work For or Forbes List: Top 10 Billionaires. For native ads, Forbes can leverage this type of content right in an ad unit, pairing it with a brand’s related message. When defining your native ad product, build it with metrics in mind so you can A/B test how your native ads are performing. For example, a leading health information Web site used Flite to create five different formats to identify what would resonate best with the audience. This ultimately resulted in highly compelling and effective native ad units. The benefit of using an ad platform in this case is that you can easily test and swap out functionality without bringing in developers. If you want to see if ads with Facebook or Twitter resonate more with your audience, or if you should include a video instead, an ad platform will facilitate that kind of innovation. By testing and iterating, you can refine your ad product before going all in. What Do You Need to Build Native Ads? Many native ads are content-driven, so advertisers need to provide assets beyond their usual media kit. As advertisers adjust to being able to push content marketing into paid media, publishers should encourage them to pull from resources like their own Web sites and social media. With native ads, entertaining and informative content such as stories, videos, slide shows, social feeds and articles can find new distribution opportunities in paid media. For example, The Atlantic ran a very successful native ad on our platform for a leading IT services provider. The ad featured informative articles and videos about how cloud computing can fuel effective business growth. As consumers enjoyed the content, they were also likely to explore cloud computing options from the advertiser. What Are Some Constraints to Native Advertising? Native ads take forethought to get right. Here are a few constraints and how to overcome them.