• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, July 5, 2016

While native advertising aims to be as engaging as editorial content, its success depends in large part on contextual relevance, with the subject and tone of branded content matching surrounding content as closely as possible.

In order to streamline this process, enabling marketers to execute contextually relevant native ad placements at scale, Nativo has joined forces with comScore to integrate the latter’s contextual intelligence into Nativo’s programmatic native ad platform.

The new program allows marketers to deliver native ads based on comScore’s Proximic technology, enabling them to bring the online measurement firm’s contextual analytics to bear on the level of specific article pages. That promises more precision than general contextual matching at the level of home page and section fronts.

The program automatically scans article pages and tags them for IAB content categories and sub-topics within categories, in order to determine what subjects would be most appropriate for native ads delivered alongside the articles. According to Nativo, the new program also analyzes articles’ content to determine age appropriate ratings for the articles and corresponding native ad units — using familiar movie ratings like G, PG-13 and R.

The new technology works with Nativo’s existing ad optimization system to automatically shift native ad spending to more successful formats and placements, including those with greater contextual relevance.  

ComScore purchased Proximic, which provides pre-bid analytics for programmatic ad sales around contextual relevance and brand safety, among other factors, in May of last year. It subsequently incorporated Proximic’s technology into its existing validated Campaign Essentials, Industry Trust and Media Metrix Multi-Platform products.

For its part in April of this year Nativo announced the hiring of Eugene Cherny, formerly product manager for video at AdsGoogle, as the company's new vice-president of product.