• by Sara Guaglione , March 18, 2020

Nativo, a branded content ad tech platform, has unveiled a new mobile ad format called Native Stories. Brands can repurpose assets created for social media in the popular “stories” format and bring them to the open web.

Brands can also use Native Stories, a vertical ad format for video and images, to engage a young demographic familiar with the “stories” user experience from platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Advertisers can distribute Native Stories across over 400 of Nativo’s premium publisher feeds. 

Nativo has had a core suite of three native ad formats for a few years. This is its first new ad format since it rolled out its Native Video ad formats.

The Native Stories ad appears in contextually relevant publisher content. A user can choose to click on the native ad that appears, which then takes them to an immersive, full-screen visual experience on mobile. Each frame of the story auto-advances, moving to the next frame every six seconds for images, or the full length of a video. Each frame has a call-to-action.

Users can also navigate through the experience by tapping on the left and right side of the screen to move through the frames — an experience familiar to those who use Instagram Stories. Videos automatically play on mute, giving users the option to turn on the sound. 

The Native Stories experience lasts from about 12 to 20 seconds. 

Call-to-actions in Native Stories have an average rate of 4%-6%, according to Nativo, driving traffic to an advertiser’s designated URL. The story auto-closes to return the user to the publisher’s content if no user action is performed.

It isn’t a “forced interaction,” Danish Ahmed, Nativo’s product manager on Native Stories, told Publishers Daily. “The ad is served in an environment where the user wants to consume content."

The format is built for categories that require more visual experiences than text, such as health, auto, finance, entertainment, retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG), Ahmed said.

Breast-cancer nonprofit Susan G. Komen is using Native Stories to engage with mobile-first consumers. 

“Breast cancer affects so many of us in one way or another, so we were excited to test out Nativo’s Native Stories format as an innovative way to present Komen to new and existing supporters,” stated Sean Tuffnell, director of communications at Susan G. Komen. “We know the ways in which our online community engages with us continue to evolve, so it is important that we evolve with them and reach as many people as possible.”

Native Stories can work for brands that have existing social-media assets they want to bring to the web, brands that want to create campaigns in the "stories" ad format, and publishers that fit with a brand’s campaign, Ahmed said.

Jay Freedman, Chief Revenue Officer at Nativo, stated Native Stories can provide brands with "more control and transparency than social environments," due to contextual targeting and access to brand engagement and sentiment reporting.