• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, April 10, 2017

In a three-year study of native advertising spending, categories that were slower to adopt native advertising in 2014 saw increases in spend in 2016, while early-adopter categories have seen their share of spend decline in 2016.

Native ad-tech provider Nativo, which conducted the research, found that slower-to-adopt verticals -- business, CPG, travel, and food and beverage -- grew by 24%, to reach 45% aggregate share of budget in 2016. Meanwhile, Nativo said the automotive OEM, tech B2B, entertainment, tech B2C, and finance and insurance sectors, which were all early adopters of native advertising in 2014, found  their aggregate share of budget decline by 20%, from 57% in 2014 to 37% in 2016. 

Nativo said the study takes into account the period from first quarter 2014 through the fourth quarter of 2016. It analyzed ad spend across its native advertising marketplace and the use of its in-feed ad units and native video formats. It studied 1.02 billion U.S. mobile and desktop impressions.

Among other key findings:

--The food and drink category grew its share of native ad spend the most, 9% year-over-year, from 2014 to 2015, and 2015 to 2016. That category was followed by travel and business, which both grew their share by 4%.

--Combining all related campaigns, (OEM, after-market, etc.), the automotive category was the most active vertical in native year-over-year. 

--Top-performing verticals in terms of engagement included CPG, entertainment, travel, food & drink, and tech B2C.

Overall, the study found that native spend is on the rise across all vertical categories in Nativo’s marketplace.

“All the signs point to native growing into a major component of brand advertisers’ digital advertising,” Justin Choi, CEO, Nativo, told Real-Time Daily via email. “What’s intriguing are the highly varied native ad spend trends that we discovered in our platform between industries that point to diverse rates of increasing adoption.”