December 23, 2025
21
minutes read
Native video advertising puts your message inside the feeds, articles and apps people already love, instead of stopping them with a pre-roll. This guide shows you how to use native video ads—formats, examples, strategy and measurement—to win real attention and results in 2026.
Native video advertising has moved from “nice-to-have” to core channel. As budgets shift toward formats that feel like content rather than interruptions, marketers are realising that native video ads can deliver higher engagement, better attention, and stronger brand outcomes than standard pre-roll or banners.
In 2023, US native digital display ad spend was already close to $100 billion, covering formats such as in-feed, outstream, and recommendation widgets. A growing share of that investment is flowing into video, because native video advertising sits exactly where people actually spend their time: social feeds, news articles, streaming and mobile apps.
This article takes you through what native video advertising is, why it’s accelerating into 2026, which formats matter, and how to plan and measure campaigns that perform. We’ll move from strategy to execution, weaving in native video advertising examples, performance benchmarks, and practical checklists so you can brief creative and media teams with confidence.
💡 For a broader view of how video and native formats fit into wider media shifts, see the 2026 Media Trends Report.
Native video advertising is a form of digital video advertising where the ad matches the form and function of the surrounding content. Instead of sitting in a separate ad slot that clearly looks like a commercial, native video ads are designed to blend into feeds, articles, recommendation units, or app interfaces.
In practice, that means:
Common examples of native video advertising:
So when someone asks “what is native video?”, the simplest answer is:
⚡ It’s a video with ads that behaves like content in its environment, rather than like a separate TV spot dropped into a digital page.
Native video is still advertising. There is always clear disclosure (“Sponsored”, “Ad”). The difference is that it is delivered as native content within the UX, which makes it better suited to mobile feeds, attention-scarce audiences, and privacy-first targeting.
Native video advertising is scaling fast because it sits at the intersection of three big shifts:
As mentioned in the introduction, eMarketer reports that US native display ad spend was already close to $100 billion in 2023, a sign that advertisers are leaning heavily on native formats as a core way to deliver digital messaging. At the same time, video is one of the fastest-growing parts of the media mix, with US video ad spend projected at over $108 billion in 2024. Native video sits right where those two trends overlap.
⚡ When video spend grows and user tolerance for interruption shrinks, native video becomes the natural middle ground.
💡 If you want a broader strategic overview of native formats, it’s worth pairing this article with Native advertising: a complete guide for marketers in 2026 and AI Digital’s pieces on online video:
These resources build out the context for how native advertising video fits into omnichannel planning.
Let’s break down why this format matters so much, starting with benefits for advertisers and viewers.
Native video is popular with marketers because it combines reach, relevance, and measurable performance.
Some of the clearest advantages:
1. Stronger engagement and attention: Native video ads are integrated into feeds and editorial environments where users are already actively consuming content. That makes them more likely to capture genuine attention than a pre-roll that stands between the viewer and the video they actually wanted.
A Kantar study for Taboola found that native video ads on the open web improved brand awareness by 26% when added to the media mix, and also boosted favourability, consideration, and brand image. In other words, people not only saw the ads; they engaged enough for brand metrics to move.
2. Better brand lift than pre-roll: Native video is not just “less annoying”; it often outperforms traditional formats on brand impact. In a Nielsen case study across five campaigns measured with Sharethrough, native video ads drove higher brand lift than pre-roll in all five campaigns. In one example for beverage brand Jarritos, native ads generated an 82% brand lift, compared to about 2% for the campaign’s pre-roll ads.
That kind of delta is hard to ignore if your goal is awareness, preference, or consideration.
3. Support for privacy-first and contextual strategies: As third-party cookies fade out and platform IDs become harder to rely on, brands are shifting toward contextual and content-based strategies. Native video fits perfectly:
Instead of building everything around personal identifiers, native content marketing leans on relevance and context.
4. Richer mid-funnel performance: Native video ads are well-suited to mid-funnel objectives such as:
Because they feel like content, viewers are more willing to invest time, which supports more nuanced storytelling than a simple static banner. Paired with strong calls to action and retargeting, native video advertising examples often show a direct impact on site visits, add-to-carts, or lead form starts.
⚡ Native video is where you turn passive awareness into active consideration.
5. AI-friendly format for optimization: Native video placements can be bought through programmatic platforms, which makes them ideal for AI-based optimization around:
We will come back to this in the programmatic section, but the key takeaway is simple: native video is structured data in a predictable format, which makes it easier for DSPs to test, learn, and improve.
Native video also works because it is more aligned with what users actually want from their media time.
1. Lower interruption: Native video ads usually appear in the flow of content rather than blocking it. A user can scroll past if they are not interested. That simple fact reduces irritation.
When someone chooses to stop and watch, they are doing it voluntarily. That opt-in behaviour is the foundation for more meaningful engagement.
2. Higher relevance: Native video is surrounded by related content. A user reading an article about sustainable fashion is far more likely to appreciate a short, well-produced video featuring sustainable clothing than a completely unrelated pre-roll.
The Kantar study mentioned earlier also found that native video performed strongly on favourability and brand image, which suggests viewers felt the ads were a better fit for their interests compared with other formats.
3. Entertainment and utility: The best native advertising video feels like a mini-show, a useful tip, or an interesting story that just happens to be branded. Viewers come away having:
That is a very different experience from being forced to sit through a generic 30-second spot.
4. Mobile-first user experience: Most native video ads are designed for mobile consumption: vertical or square formats, subtitles, and visually clear storytelling that works on a small screen. For a user, this feels like the rest of their feed, not like a TV ad shrunk down.
When native video ads respect the way people actually use their phones, they earn more goodwill and more genuine viewing time.
⚡ “If a native video feels like an interruption, it isn’t native enough yet.”
Traditional video ads (pre-roll, mid-roll, standard in-stream) and native video ads both use moving images and sound, but they behave very differently.
Before we look at performance, it helps to see how each format behaves in the moment a viewer encounters it. The key difference is how much the ad interrupts what someone is trying to do versus how naturally it sits inside their content journey.
This shift from interruption to integration is one reason native video often drives better sentiment and brand metrics.
Traditional pre-roll behaves like TV transplanted into digital. It is familiar but not especially aligned with the way people scroll on their phones.
Native video is built for digital from the start. For example:
Because native units align more closely with their environment, viewers tend to trust them more than disjointed, obviously-separate ad slots. They feel like they belong.
A global study by Outbrain and Savanta found that 68% of consumers trust ads they see in editorial environments, compared with 55% who trust ads on social media, and that native formats were rated the least intrusive of all digital ad types.
⚡ Ads that feel like the page they’re on inherit some of its credibility.
Traditional video ads can report strong completion rates when they are non-skippable. The question is how much of that completion reflects real attention versus people simply waiting for the ad to end.
Native video ads tend to have:
Joint ‘Attention in Context’ research from OMD Worldwide, Yahoo and Amplified Intelligence looked at more than 128,000 mobile web ads and found that video formats—including native video—averaged 2.73 seconds of active attention against a 2.5-second benchmark, with native video and video interscroller among the only formats to consistently beat the threshold. That suggests people are willing to stay with native-style video units longer than most other ad types, rather than just waiting for them to end.
If you care about view-through rate (VTR) and completion, you can get both formats to perform on paper. If you care about what happens in the viewer’s head, native often has the edge.
In simplified terms:
This is why many modern media plans include both:
“Native video” covers a range of placements. Each type has different strengths, UX patterns, and use cases. Understanding the main categories will help you decide which native video ads belong in which part of your funnel.
Pre-roll is the most familiar format: a video ad that plays before the content the viewer has chosen.
Not all pre-roll is native. It becomes native pre-roll when:
Use pre-roll native video when:
Pre-roll is still more interruptive than most native formats, but when carefully integrated (e.g. branded intros to a publisher’s own video series) it can behave more like sponsorship than a random ad.
In-feed native video is what most marketers think of first.
You see it on:
Key characteristics:
In-feed native video is powerful because it:
This is also where your native video advertising examples will often come from: the TikTok campaign that looked like organic creator content, the LinkedIn thought-leadership clip that felt like a regular post, the Instagram Reel that blended into Reels.
In-article (often called in-read) video units are embedded within the body of an article.
You’ve seen them as:
These are usually outstream units, meaning the video ad does not require an underlying video content stream. The article is the content; the video is the ad.
In-article native video works well when:
This is a strong mid-funnel format for product explainers and how-to content.
Every major social and professional platform has its own flavour of platform-native video ads:
These units are native by design:
When you tailor creative to each environment, you get better performance than simply resizing the same TVC for every channel. For example, TikTok recommends that ads use its native editing styles, trending audio, and fast pacing; LinkedIn rewards clear hooks and subtitles that make sense in a professional feed.
This is where the line between ad native and influencer content blurs. In 2026, expect more campaigns that mix paid native placements with creator-produced videos to unlock reach and authenticity simultaneously.
Intrinsic in-game ads are placed inside the game world itself. They may take the form of:
The IAB describes intrinsic in-game ads as units that are a seamless part of the gameplay environment, not separate pop-ups. They’re “there” as part of the world, which makes them feel more like real-world sponsorship than intrusive banners.
Intrinsic native video works best when:
This type of native advertising video is particularly interesting for reaching Gen Z and gaming-focused audiences without breaking immersion.
Outstream video is a broad category of video ads that play outside of a dedicated video player.
Typical patterns include:
Outstream units are often sold programmatically and can be styled to look like either:
They are considered native when they follow the design system of the publisher and behave like part of the page rather than a bolted-on player.
Outstream is a flexible way to extend native video advertising across the open web, especially when you are working with SSPs and DSPs.
Beyond the core formats above, you will increasingly see native video in:
💡 If you’re curious how streaming ad models are evolving, AI Digital’s piece on Netflix is a useful reference point: Netflix advertising: The future of streaming TV ads
In each case, the principle is the same: native video shows up where content lives, matches the UX, and offers something worth watching.
Programmatic native video advertising refers to buying and serving native video ads through automated platforms (DSPs, SSPs, exchanges) instead of manual, one-off deals with individual publishers.
At a high level, the programmatic stack for native video looks similar to display or traditional video:
⚡ Programmatic doesn’t make your message smarter on its own. It makes it easier to put smart messages in the right places.
What makes programmatic native video powerful in 2026 is the combination of:
1. Scale and reach: You can access native video placements across thousands of sites and apps in one plan, including:
eMarketer notes that native formats remain a large share of digital display and that social and in-app environments are driving much of the mobile ad growth. Programmatic access is how you tap that at speed.
2. AI-powered targeting and personalization: Modern DSPs use machine learning models to:
Rather than manually tweaking every lever, you set your guardrails and let optimization models learn what works.
3. Curated and premium marketplaces: Many publishers and platforms now offer curated native video inventories (private marketplaces, deals) that focus on:
This allows you to avoid the low-quality corners of the open web, while still buying programmatically.
💡 AI Digital’s Programmatic video advertising explained: Smarter campaigns for the streaming era is a good companion piece if you are setting up your programmatic stack.
4. Supply intelligence and transparency: One challenge with native in the early days was opaque supply. In 2026, the expectation is much higher transparency:
Solutions such as AI Digital’s Smart Supply are specifically designed to bring unbiased supply, transparency, and optimization together for smarter media buying.
Programmatic native video is where the format becomes truly scalable. Instead of running isolated tests, you can make native video a consistent, always-on part of your media plan and manage it with the same rigor as any other programmatic channel.
⚡ Think of programmatic native video as your always-on, context-aware storytelling engine.
This is where strategy meets execution. The following seven best practices will help your native video advertising work harder, supported with real-world patterns and examples.
Native video should look like it belongs wherever it appears. That goes beyond simply using the right aspect ratio.
To integrate with platform design:
For example:
When you plan budgets and creative for 2026, it will help to track which platforms are best for which outcomes.
In a feed, you have about two seconds to earn a pause. That’s it.
Best practices for strong hooks:
⚡ If your hook wouldn’t make someone stop scrolling without sound, it isn’t a hook yet.
Kantar’s work on media reactions has repeatedly shown that environments where people are receptive to ads are those where creative gets to the point quickly and respects time The same principle applies within each native placement: front-load the value.
💡 As AI-driven targeting gets more precise, the hook can also be more specific. A piece like AI targeted advertising: How smart targeting Is redefining ROI and personalization dives deeper into the targeting side of this equation, but your creative should assume you are talking to a clearly defined audience.
Hard-sell messages rarely perform well in native video ads. Viewers are there for content, not for a direct pitch. The most effective native campaigns behave like short stories or mini-episodes.
Consider these principles:
Nielsen analyzed consumer reaction to more than 100 pieces of branded content and found that when the same brand ran as both branded content and a pre-roll ad, the branded content drove far stronger results—averaging 86% brand recall versus 65% for pre-roll, and delivering higher lift in affinity, purchase intent and recommendation intent.
That gap reinforces the point that people respond more strongly to story-led, content-style executions than to straightforward product spots.
💡 An article like Dynamic content personalization: How brands create smarter customer experiences in 2026 expands on how personalized storytelling can adapt to different audiences, but the core idea remains: story first, product second.
Length is not a rigid rule, but there are good guidelines:
The important questions:
Completion and cost per completed view (CPCV) often fall off a cliff when videos drag. Short, sharp creative not only performs better; it also gives optimization algorithms more room to test multiple variations.
Most native video advertising impressions are served on phones. Creative that doesn’t respect that reality underperforms.
Mobile-first guidelines:
Also think about thumb-friendly CTAs: buttons or overlays that are easy to tap, not tiny links.
Native video is excellent at upper- and mid-funnel objectives, but it should still signpost what comes next.
Strong CTAs:
You can include CTAs as:
Clarity beats cleverness here. Viewers who liked your content should never have to guess what to do next.
Native video is not a one-and-done format. The brands that win treat every campaign as a series of experiments.
What to test:
What to measure:
We will detail these metrics in the next section, but the mindset is simple: launch small, learn fast, scale what works.
💡 A piece such as Advertising intelligence: Turning data Into smarter media decisions goes deeper into the analytics side, but the practical takeaway is that your native content marketing should evolve with each cycle of performance data.
To manage native video as a serious channel, you need to measure more than impressions and clicks. The metrics below are the ones that matter most in 2026.
Where relevant, we’ll use standard definitions from IAB and other reputable sources.
Viewability answers the question: did the ad have a chance to be seen?
The IAB defines viewability as an impression where a minimum portion of the ad (typically 50% of pixels for at least one second for display, two seconds for video) was on screen. It does not guarantee that a user actually looked, but it filters out impressions where the ad was never in view.
For native video, you want:
You can improve viewability by:
View-through rate (VTR) measures what percentage of impressions reached a certain watch threshold:
These curves tell you where people drop off. They are essential for understanding how engaging your native video ads really are.
Optimisation ideas:
Completion rate also feeds into pricing when you buy on a CPCV basis.
AVOC is an advanced quality metric defined by IAB as the percentage of measurable impressions where the video was both audible and viewable when it reached completion.
In other words:
This is a very high-value state for storytelling. You will rarely reach huge AVOC percentages, but tracking it helps you understand where you are getting truly complete exposures.
To improve AVOC:
Cost per completed view (CPCV) is how much you pay (or effectively pay) for each completed video view.
The IAB glossary describes CPCV as the price an advertiser pays every time a video ad runs through to completion, rather than paying for all impressions regardless of completion.
CPCV helps you answer:
You can lower CPCV by improving creative (so more people complete) or by optimising bids and inventory (so you pay less per impression while keeping completion stable).
Attention is a broad category that includes:
The industry is increasingly interested in attention because it correlates more strongly with outcomes than simple exposure. A short, attentive view is worth more than a long, ignored one.
Native video is naturally suited to attention metrics, because it:
You can treat attention as a mid-funnel KPI and optimise creative and placement to maximise it.
⚡ Treat attention as its own KPI, not an afterthought. It’s often the missing link between views and outcomes
Brand lift measures how much your campaign moved brand metrics such as:
This is usually done via control-exposed surveys or platform-level brand lift studies.
A Comscore study for Opera Mediaworks that aggregated nine native mobile video campaigns found that native mobile video drove significant brand lift and outperformed Comscore’s mobile norms across the funnel: ad recall was +6 points, perception of ad uniqueness +9 points, brand advocacy +5 points, and purchase intent +5 points among people exposed to the ads versus a matched control group.
Those uplifts show that when native video is built for the environment and follows creative best practices, it doesn’t just get watched—it shifts how people feel about the brand and how likely they are to buy.
For serious investments in native advertising video, building a brand-lift study into your plan will tell you whether the channel is doing more than getting views.
Incrementality answers the question: how many of our conversions or sales happened because of this campaign, beyond what would have happened anyway?
You can measure incrementality with:
Native video can drive both:
Incrementality helps you quantify the total value of native video in that wider path to conversion.
💡 Finally, good measurement frameworks (for example, those discussed in AI Digital’s 15 essential digital marketing KPIs to track (and improve) in 2026) help you decide which metrics matter most for your business so that AI optimisation has the right targets.
AI and machine learning are now embedded in most serious DSPs and native platforms. For native video ads, optimisation typically happens in three layers:
The goal might be to maximise completed views, minimise CPCV, or hit a CPA. AI can juggle thousands of micro-decisions per second to stay on target.
Over time, the system learns which variants drive higher VTR, attention, or conversions for each audience or context.
This is where native video advertising examples become part of a broader orchestration, not a siloed tactic.
Native video advertising connects creativity, context, and performance in a way few other formats can match.
As you plan for 2026, the key question is no longer “Should we test native video?” but “How do we institutionalise native video as a core part of our media strategy?”
That means:
If you want support turning these principles into live campaigns, AI Digital’s services around planning, Smart Supply, and AI-enabled optimisation are built for exactly this role. Check out what we do and drop us a message.
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Description
Use case
Description of use case
Examples of companies using AI
Ease of implementation
Impact
Audience segmentation and insights
Identify and categorize audience groups based on behaviors, preferences, and characteristics
Automated ad campaigns
Automate ad creation, placement, and optimization across various platforms
Brand sentiment tracking
Monitor and analyze public opinion about a brand across multiple channels in real time
Campaign strategy optimization
Analyze data to predict optimal campaign approaches, channels, and timing
Content strategy
Generate content ideas, predict performance, and optimize distribution strategies
Personalization strategy development
Create tailored messaging and experiences for consumers at scale
For most campaigns, aim for 15–30 seconds. That’s long enough to hook attention, land one clear message, and include a call to action without losing viewers. You can go shorter (6–10 seconds) for quick reminders or longer (up to 60–90 seconds) for in-article explainers if the content genuinely earns the extra time.
Social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn are usually the most effective starting points because they’re built around feed-based video. From there, layer in premium publishers, content recommendation networks, and in-app or in-game inventory via programmatic buys to extend reach beyond social.
The sweet spot is usually mid-funnel: education, consideration, and driving qualified traffic to content or product pages. You can still run native video for pure awareness or to support direct response, but it works best when it’s helping people understand a problem, a solution, or a story — not just shouting an offer.
Yes, very. B2B brands use native video to explain complex products, share short case studies, and position experts on channels like LinkedIn and industry publishers. When the content feels genuinely helpful and specific to the audience, native video can warm up prospects long before a sales conversation.
As a starting point, many marketers put 10–20% of their digital video budget into native formats to test performance over a quarter or two. If native video proves it can deliver stronger attention, brand lift, or cost per conversion than other video channels, it’s reasonable to scale that share upward.
You can, as long as you re-edit it for the feed and the platform. That usually means pulling short, self-contained clips from webinars, product demos, or case studies, adding subtitles, reframing for vertical or square formats, and front-loading a strong hook so it works as a standalone native unit.
Focus on a primary KPI such as completed views, cost per completed view (CPCV), conversions, or brand lift, depending on your goal. Support that with a small set of quality indicators — typically viewability, view-through rate, and attention or average watch time — so you can tell not just how often your ads are served, but how deeply people engage with them.
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