Search and social advertising dominate most media buying conversations, but a third channel — native advertising — quietly drives billions of dollars in eCommerce revenue, lead generation, and content marketing every year. Taboola and Outbrain, the two dominant native advertising platforms, place your ads within the content feeds of some of the world's most-trafficked news and media sites. For the right offers and verticals, native advertising delivers scale that search and social simply cannot match.
What Is Native Advertising?
Native advertising refers to paid content that matches the form, feel, and function of the platform on which it appears. On Taboola and Outbrain, native ads appear as 'recommended content' widgets at the bottom of news articles on sites like CNN, Fox News, MSN, USA Today, and thousands of other major publishers.
Because native ads look like organic content recommendations rather than display advertisements, they achieve significantly higher click-through rates than traditional banner ads — while reaching audiences in a content-consumption mindset that makes them receptive to engaging content.
Taboola vs. Outbrain: Key Differences
Taboola: The larger of the two platforms by reach, with exclusive partnerships with major publishers including Fox News, CBS News, USA Today, and others. Generally reaches a slightly broader, more mass-market audience.
Outbrain: Known for premium publisher relationships including CNN, The Washington Post, and Le Monde. Tends toward a slightly more upscale, news-engaged audience.
For most advertisers, testing both platforms simultaneously provides the most complete picture of native advertising performance. The two platforms have separate ad accounts, separate bidding systems, and often produce meaningfully different results for the same offer.
What Works on Native Advertising
Native advertising performs best for specific content types and verticals:
Advertorial-style content: Long-form articles or landing pages written in editorial style that tell a story before introducing a product or offer.
Finance and insurance offers: Financial products with broad appeal — debt consolidation, insurance quotes, investment opportunities — consistently perform well on native.
Health and wellness: Supplements, fitness products, and health information offers reach receptive audiences through native's content-consumption context.
eCommerce with strong creative: Products with compelling before/after stories, dramatic results, or strong visual hooks translate well to native's thumbnail-and-headline format.
Creative Strategy for Native Advertising
The thumbnail and headline combination is everything in native advertising. Users make a click decision in under a second based entirely on these two elements.
Curiosity gap headlines: Headlines that tease a surprising finding without fully revealing it ('Doctors Are Stunned by This Simple Trick for...') drive high CTRs but require landing pages that deliver on the promise.
Problem-aware creatives: Thumbnails and headlines that speak directly to a specific pain point perform consistently for lead generation offers.
Test at volume: Native advertising requires significant creative testing. Plan for 10–20+ thumbnail and headline combinations per campaign and let data determine winners quickly.
Native Advertising Account Management
Both Taboola and Outbrain require advertiser accounts in good standing. Accounts with established payment history and clean compliance records receive better publisher placement and lower CPCs over time.
Start with site-level targeting: Block underperforming publisher sites aggressively in the first two weeks. Native ad ROI is highly publisher-dependent, and quickly eliminating losing placements is essential.
Bid strategically: Both platforms offer automated bidding options, but manual CPC bidding gives you the control needed to optimize at the campaign level during the learning phase.