Guide
Native advertising
A complete guide to native advertising and sponsored content
Native advertising is a way brands naturally blend ads into content, helping businesses reach audiences without disrupting their experience.
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What is native advertising?
Native advertising is when ads are designed to blend in with the appearance and function of the content around them. They match the surrounding content so users view them as part of the experience, rather than separate or intrusive promotions.
Why is native advertising important?
Native advertising is important because it allows brands to reach audiences in a way that feels natural and engaging, breaking through the noise of traditional ads. According to Amazon Ads 2025 Higher Impact study, 91% of consumers want to be the ones who decide when and where they interact with a brand,1 highlighting the need for non-disruptive advertising approaches. These ads may help brands see higher engagement because they do not interrupt the user experience and instead provide value by matching the context where consumers are already engaged.
How does native advertising work?
Native advertising works by creating content that aligns with the style, tone, and format of a platform, then integrating it for maximum reach and impact. Brands choose relevant audiences and placements to make native ads feel familiar and useful.
Content creation
Brands create native ads by designing content that matches the style, tone, and format of the channel where they'll appear. This means crafting visuals, copy, and messaging that look and read like the organic content users expect to see. The goal is to create ads that feel familiar rather than disruptive, ensuring they integrate seamlessly into the user experience while still delivering the brand's message.
Platform integration
Native ads fit into the places users expect to see ordinary content, such as social feeds, articles, or recommended product lists. By blending into these familiar environments, these ads become part of the browsing experience.
Placement and audience targeting
Advertisers use behavioral insights about audiences to strategically place native ads where they’re most likely to engage, helping brands reach their ideal customers.
Labelling and disclosure
Disclosure is required so users know when content is paid; headlines and tags like "Ad," “Sponsored Content,” or “Promoted Listing” help maintain transparency and comply with regulations.
Types of native ads
There are several types of native ads, each with its own style and placement. Here are some common examples:
Sponsored content
Sponsored content is paid content created to look and feel like editorial articles, videos, or graphics on a publisher’s site. Brands often partner with publishers to share their story, product, or message.
In-feed ads
These are ads placed directly in a user's news feed, social media timeline, or content stream, appearing alongside organic posts or articles.
Paid search ads
Native paid search ads appear in search results and are designed to look like organic search listings but are clearly marked as sponsored.
Recommendation widgets
Recommendation widgets show promoted content or products within lists, such as “You might also like” sections on websites.
Promoted listings
Promoted listings help products or services appear at the top of shopping or review sites, looking like regular results but labeled as ads.
Native ad units
Custom native ad units use images, headlines, and text to blend in with a site’s layout, usually powered by sophisticated ad platforms.
Benefits of native advertising
Native advertising offers several benefits for brands aiming to make an impact:
Improved user experience
Native ads do not disrupt browsing like banner ads do. Their match with surrounding content can help increase interactions and improve the user experience.
Higher engagement rates
Native ads can lead to higher click-through rates than traditional display ads, as their format encourages users to click and interact with paid content naturally.
Fights ad fatigue and ad blindness
With too much exposure and without measures like frequency caps in place, users can develop ad blindness and skip over traditional display ads. However, the contextual nature of native ads helps avoid this issue and maintain attention.
Scalability
Native ads can run on many different sites and social media platforms at once. This makes it easy to scale campaigns and use analytics to find the best places to reach a target audience.
Versatility of ad formats
There are many kinds of native ads—like sponsored content, promoted listings, and recommendation widgets. This versatility helps with optimization and allows brands to reach people in different ways.
Increases brand visibility
When native ads appear among surrounding content, it’s likely that more people will see the brand and message. This helps grow brand awareness and keeps the brand top of mind for the audience.
Reaches target audiences
Brands can use analytics and audience targeting to make sure native ads are shown to people who will be most interested. This can help brands spend less while reaching the right audiences.
Risks of native advertising
It is important to understand the possible risks of native advertising and plan ways to avoid problems.
Complex measurement
Native ads can be harder to track because they look like regular content. Brands need strong analytics and optimization to understand which ads work and how to improve.
Deception
If native ads are not labeled or have unclear disclosure, users might feel tricked. This can hurt brand trust and reputation. Always use headlines and clear labeling to help users understand what is paid content.
Limited control over placement
With some native ads, brands may not always choose exactly where ads show up. Using optimization helps, but there is always some risk of the ad not being in the perfect spot in the surrounding content.
Creation costs
Creating native ads often takes more time and resources than banner ads. Strong design, analytics, and optimization are needed, but the reward can be higher engagement and better results.
Best practices for native advertising
To achieve success with native advertising, marketers should consider the following best practices:
1. Know your target audience
Understanding your audience's preferences and behaviors will help tailor your native ads effectively.
2. Create high-quality content
The content of native ads should be engaging, informative, and aligned with the interests of your audience.
3. Clear disclosure
Transparency is vital. Be clear about the nature of your sponsored content; this builds trust and avoids misleading your audience.
4. Optimize for performance
Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of your native ad campaigns. Regularly assess click-through rates and other metrics to optimize for better results.
Examples of native advertising
Case Study
Honda partnered with Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab to launch the 2024 Honda Prologue through the Honda Dream Generator, an AI-powered interactive tool featured in an Amazon.com homepage takeover. The campaign allowed audiences to create personalized, choose-your-own-adventure films across multiple devices—including Fire TV, mobile phones, Echo Show, and computers—offering more than 190 unique story variations. This creative approach—combining over 300 written prompts with 20+ custom AI models and 457 hand-drawn figures—drove widespread audience engagement and reaffirmed that customers want opportunities to participate in highly personalized advertising experiences they can help shape. The campaign achieved significant lifts across all key metrics, including unaided brand awareness and purchase consideration, while driving lifts in perception of the Prologue as family-friendly and environmentally friendly.
Case Study
Taco Bell India launched a "See a six, catch a taco" campaign during the ICC Men's T20 World Cup in October–November 2022, leveraging Fire TV ads to reach cricket-viewing audiences on match days. The brand utilized the Feature Rotator ad slot—a high-impact placement appearing first when viewers turned on their TVs—to engage audiences at the first point of interaction with cricket content. Through this premium placement, combined with topical messaging around cricket, the campaign blended naturally into the viewing experience while audiences were most engaged with the sport. The two-day campaign generated 12 million impressions with video completion rates exceeding 55%, surpassing Fire TV benchmarks, while driving top-of-the-funnel awareness among target audiences.
Solutions from Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads offers a range of native advertising solutions that help brands reach audiences across Amazon properties, devices, and premium third-party content.
Display ads help your brand connect with customers across Amazon properties like Twitch and devices like Fire TV and Echo Show, as well as premium third-party content. With the right creative, these ads can integrate naturally into surrounding content, and Amazon Ads Responsive e-commerce creative (REC) display can take this further by automatically optimizing creative to rotate products and calls-to-action based on performance.
Device ads run across Amazon devices with screens (like Fire TV, Fire tablet, and Echo Show) and on services (like Prime Video) to deliver high-impact, immersive, and natively integrated ad experiences that make it easy for customers to engage and take action.
Fire TV ads help brands engage customers as they browse and discover streaming entertainment. These ads appear as sponsored tiles in dedicated rows on Fire TV, blending naturally into the interface with formats like Inline Banners, Feature Rotator, Sponsored Screensaver, and Sponsored Tiles that match the device’s browsing experience.
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Features from Amazon Ads
Asset Based Creative (ABC) on Amazon DSP allows advertisers to use their own ad components such as images, logos, headlines, body text, and Call-to-Action (CTA) to serve native ads via third-party Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) like TripleLift.
Responsive eCommerce Creative (REC) allows endemic advertisers to promote their products on third-party Native supplies, such as TripleLift. To get started, simply add the ASINs of your products. REC will optimize to select the best ASIN for your target audience. It will then deliver live elements, such as pricing, deals, and star ratings of the chosen ASIN to the third-party supply sources for in-feed native advertising.
Alexa Native Ads offers Alexa as an Amazon Mobile Display supply source in Amazon DSP. Advertisers who sell on Amazon will see Alexa as an additional inventory supply that is checked by default for Amazon Mobile Display line items. Amazon DSP self-service advertisers utilizing Responsive eCommerce (REC) creative templates will have the opportunity to reach incremental customers seamlessly.
Key takeaways on native ads
As brands navigate the complexities of consumer behavior in an attention-challenged digital landscape, native advertising represents a dynamic solution that fosters authentic engagement. By focusing on delivering value through contextually relevant content, brands can leverage this strategy to not only increase brand awareness but also build long-term relationships with consumers.
FAQs
Amazon native shopping ads were a type of native advertising offered by Amazon that displayed product recommendations directly on websites or pages relevant to the content based on keywords or categories. These native ads came in formats like Recommendation Ads, Search Ads, and Custom Ads and could be shown in list or grid views. Website owners could monetize visitor clicks, earning commissions when users bought products through these ads.
Amazon replaced native shopping ads with newer solutions like the Native Commerce Advertising (NCA) program, Asset Based Creative (ABC) in Amazon DSP, and other advanced native advertising formats. These newer offerings integrate natively into product-focused content such as reviews or recommendations, use AI-driven product suggestions, and provide better optimization, analytics, and monetization options for both brands and publishers.
Native advertising blends paid content into the surrounding content on a site or app, matching the look, feel, and style so it feels natural to the user and improves the user experience. Display advertising, such as banner ads, usually stands apart from the content, often appearing in fixed placements like sidebars or headers and can interrupt the browsing experience. Native ads can help increase engagement and improve click-through rates because they don’t disrupt the user experience.
You can identify native advertising when the ad matches the style and format of the surrounding content but includes clear labels or disclosure like “Sponsored,” “Ad,” or “Promoted.” If the ad feels like seamless paid content designed to fit the user experience, it’s likely native advertising.
The cost of native advertising depends on many factors like the platform, targeting options, and ad formats. Pricing models typically include cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPM), or cost per acquisition (CPA). Native ads can sometimes cost more to create than banner ads due to the need for quality content, optimization, and analytics. Some platforms also offer programmatic buying to optimize costs and targeting for the best ROI.
Display ads from Amazon Ads supports cost-per-click as well as cost-per-thousand viewable impression (vCPM) pricing options with no minimum campaign spend requirements. Pricing for displays ads executed through the Amazon DSP varies depending on the format and placement. Self-service customers are in full control of their campaigns, and there are no management fees. The managed-service option typically requires a minimum spend of $50,000 (minimum may vary per country). Native display ads supports share of voice (SOV), rotational media, and auction, like CPM, CPC, and cost per action.
Native ads vary by type, but typically they look like regular content on the platform. For example, on social media they might appear as in-feed posts with brand headlines and images. On websites, they can be sponsored content articles, recommended product grids, or promoted listings with product images, user reviews, and prices. They always include clear disclosure labels to separate paid content from organic content.
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Additonal Resources
Sources
1 Amazon Ads custom research with Environics Research. 2025 Higher Impact. Fielded December 2024. Data reflects CA, UK, and US aggregated. Respondents by country surveyed: Canada: 1,042, United Kingdom: 1,036, United States of America: 1,033. Total n=3,111. Year-over-year comparisons reflect regional respondent sample changes with CA, DE, FR, IT, ES, JP, UK, and the US being surveyed in 2023. In 2024, consumers in Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States were surveyed.