About native ads

Native ads match the look and feel of your site or app and provide a better user experience for your visitors. Native ads are different from standard ads in that they're designed to fit neatly inside the user's path through your site or app. Visitors still know they’re ads, but they look great next to your content. 

Native ads are based on flexible components

We define "native" as component-based ads that are styled by the publisher instead of the advertiser. This definition applies to a broad range of use cases, from highly custom sponsored posts to scaled native backfill. In all cases, Google receives structured components from the advertiser and inserts them into styles that the publisher defines.

Banner ad components

As the above example shows, with traditional banner ads:

1. The advertiser provides a completed ad (an image or tag) with a fixed size.
2. Google Ad Manager hosts the ad, doesn’t change it, and serves it into the stated size.
3. The user sees the ad exactly as the advertiser prepared it.

Native ad components

With native ads:

1. The advertiser provides the components for a native creative (like the headline, image, destination URL, logo, and so forth) instead of a tag.
2. The publisher uses Google Ad Manager to create a native style that matches their site or app. Ad Manager takes the components and generates an ad with an appearance that is appropriate for the context of each impression.
3. The user sees an ad that fits seamlessly into the surrounding content.

One creative, many layouts

Google Ad Manager can take the native ad components that the advertiser provides and insert them into many different layouts, depending on the type of device where the ad will appear, how the content on the page appears, the amount of space available, and more.

In the above example:

1. The advertiser provides the values for the variables (such as "Modern minimalist home goods" for the headline). These values are stored in a single native creative.

2. For an impression in a mobile app content feed, Google Ad Manager applies a responsive layout that fits in with content headlines.

3. For another impression on desktop web, Ad Manager applies a layout appropriate for a 300x250 slot.

This example shows how a single, component-based native creative can flow to two completely different native styles for different inventory segments. Both native styles use the same variables, but they display the variables to users in different ways.

Next steps

• See how native works in Google Ad Manager
• Get started with trafficking native ads