//Glossary · Updated October 11, 2026

Native advertising glossary

The words you meet running native ads on Taboola, Microsoft, Outbrain, Revcontent and MGID, in plain English. Each term has its own link, and many point to a guide that goes deeper.

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33 native advertising terms

Ad review: The check a network runs before and after an ad goes live, against its rules on pictures, claims, landing pages and products. An ad that fails is rejected until it is fixed. Why native ads get rejected →
Advertorial: A page written like an article that pre-sells a product: a story, a review or a list, with links to the offer. Many native ads lead to an advertorial rather than straight to a product page.
Aspect ratio: The shape of an image as width to height. Native networks mostly use landscape shapes: 16:9 on Taboola, 1.91:1 (plus a 1:1 square) on Microsoft, 3:2 on Outbrain, 4:3 on Revcontent and 16:9 on MGID. Native ad image sizes →
Before-and-after: A picture showing a problem and its result side by side. Common in health and beauty. Some networks’ written rules restrict them, but one in the same form as the winners already running is fair game, never a more extreme one. The rules network by network →
Bid strategy: How you tell a network what to pay: a fixed bid per click, or an automated strategy that adjusts bids to hit a target cost per conversion or to get the most conversions for a budget.
Branding text: The advertiser name shown with a native ad, usually under the headline. Networks limit its length; Taboola allows up to 30 characters. Taboola ad specs →
Contextual targeting: Showing ads next to content on a related topic, like a joint-pain ad beside a health article. Native networks also target by location, device, time of day and audience.
Conversion: The action you are paying for after the click: a sale, a lead form, a sign-up or a call. Native platforms track it with a pixel or a server-side event on your site.
CPA (cost per acquisition): Total spend divided by conversions: what each sale or lead cost. The number to judge a native ad by, more than its clicks.
CPC (cost per click): What you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Most native campaigns are bought on a cost-per-click basis, with bids set by the advertiser or by the network’s automated bidding.
CPM (cost per thousand): What it costs to show an ad a thousand times. Some native and programmatic buys are priced this way; the M is the Roman numeral for a thousand.
Creative: The ad itself: the picture and headline (and description, where used) a reader sees.
Creative fatigue: When an ad’s results slip because the same readers have seen it too often. The cure is a steady supply of new pictures, not a bigger budget. How long native ads run →
CTR (click-through rate): Clicks divided by impressions. A higher CTR means the picture and headline stop more readers, but it says nothing on its own about whether those clicks buy.
Days running: How long an ad has been live, from the first to the last time it was seen. Advertisers keep paying for ads that make money, so a long run is strong evidence an ad works for them. Real numbers from this week →
Headline (title): The line of text next to the thumbnail. Native networks usually recommend keeping it to around 60 characters so it isn’t cut off in narrower widgets. Native ad headlines, counted →
Landing page: The page a reader reaches after clicking the ad. Its promise has to match the ad’s headline and picture, or the ad is wasted and may be rejected.
Lead generation: Ads that collect a person’s details for a follow-up, like an insurance quote or a roofing estimate, rather than selling on the spot. Insurance, Medicare, mortgage and home services ads on native are mostly lead generation. Native ads for lead generation →
Native ad library: A searchable database of native ads seen across networks, with when each was first and last seen and where it ran. Our weekly research reads the most-bought US native ads from public native ad libraries. Our approach →
Native ad network: A company that sells native ad placements across many publishers’ sites and runs the platform advertisers buy them through. Taboola, Microsoft, Outbrain, Revcontent and MGID are the biggest in the US. Taboola, Microsoft, Outbrain, Revcontent and MGID →
Native advertising: Paid ads that match the look of the page they appear on, like a sponsored story among a news site’s articles, labelled as sponsored. On the open web this usually means recommendation widgets from networks such as Taboola, Microsoft, Outbrain, Revcontent and MGID. The native networks compared →
Placement: A spot on a publisher’s site where an ad can appear. In our research, how many placements an ad was bought on shows how widely an advertiser is spending behind it. Top native advertisers by placements →
Pre-lander: A page between the ad and the offer, often an advertorial or a quiz, that warms the reader up before the sales page. Also called a bridge page.
Publisher: The website that shows the ads: a news, entertainment or content site that earns money from the native widgets on its pages.
Recommendation widget: The block of pictures and headlines under or beside an article, often titled something like “You may like” or “Around the web”. It mixes paid native ads with the publisher’s own stories.
ROAS (return on ad spend): Revenue from the ads divided by what they cost. A ROAS of 2 means two dollars back for every dollar spent.
Site blocking: Excluding publisher sites that spend your budget without results. Most native platforms report results by site and let you block the poor ones.
Split test (A/B test): Running two or more versions of an ad with everything else equal, to see which works better. In native, test the picture first, then the headline. How to test native ads →
Thumbnail: The ad’s picture as it appears in a widget, usually small. It does most of the work in native: it is what stops a reader scrolling past articles. Native ad images that win →
Tracking pixel: A small piece of code from the ad network on your site that records visits and conversions, so the network can report results and optimise bids towards people who convert.
vCTR (viewable CTR): Clicks divided by viewable impressions, the times the ad was actually on screen. Taboola reports it because many widget impressions are never scrolled into view.
Winning ad: An ad an advertiser keeps paying for: still running after weeks, bought on many placements. It is strong evidence the ad earns its budget, not proof of its results. What’s winning this week →
Winning formula: Why a group of long-running ads in a space wins: the hook, the emotion, the persuasion principle, the mood and the kind of photo, shared by several different advertisers. It is the psychology behind many ads, not any one ad, so anyone can make brand-new ads from it. Winning formulas by space →

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Definitions are general; each network uses its own names for some features. Where a number is given, it comes from that network’s own help pages.

Native advertising glossary

33 native advertising terms

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