Commentary

Forecast; Native Ads Will Dominate Display

Native advertising will account for over half of all display advertising revenue in 2017, according to a new forecast from eMarketer, with a growing proportion of this revenue coming from channels other than social media platforms, including media and publishing Web sites.

Overall native advertising spending will increase 33% from a total of $16.21 billion in 2016 to $22.09 billion in 2017, eMarketer predicts, with a further increase of 28% forecast for 2018, when the total will rise to $28.24 billion.

Within these figures, the amount coming from social-media platforms will increase 33% from $14 billion in 2016 to $18.59 billion in 2017. The amount coming from non-social-media sources will jump 58.2% from $2.21 billion to $3.5 billion over the same period.

In proportional terms, the share of revenue coming from non-social native ads will increase from 13.6% to 15.8%.  In 2018, it will rise to 17.8%, or $5.02 billion.

Native advertising’s share of total display advertising revenues will increase from 49% in 2016 to 53% in 2017, as total display revenues jump from $33 billion to $41.7 billion over the same period.

The growth forecast for non-social channels seems to hold promise for publishers. That's amid mounting concern over the social-media platforms’ dominance in native advertising, as well as their control of publishers’ audiences.

Native campaigns on publishers’ own sites could command a higher price as advertising clients seek more custom executions not available on big social platforms.

However, native ads present their own pitfalls as well.

One growing worry is of a clampdown by the FTC on native ad campaigns with insufficient disclosures alerting consumers that the content is actually advertising. Earlier this year, a study by MediaRadar found that 37% of publishers weren’t complying with the FTC rules on disclosure in 2016.  

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