Native Advertising Studies: Why Brands See 50% Higher ROAS (2026)

Most brand owners treat native advertising as an afterthought, a channel they "might test later." Then they see the studies: Taboola brands that added native to their media mix posted a 50% increase in return on ad spend, with above-average CTR and a 1.26x lift in conversions through Taboola's attentive audiences.

That is not a soft brand-awareness number. That is revenue. And it sits on top of a simpler fact most marketers ignore: 25% of all online time happens on the open web, where native ads live. If you are not buying that inventory, you are skipping the single largest slice of where people spend their attention.

I'm Marcel Sattler, founder of native-advertising.net, and since 2015 I've deployed more than $100M across Taboola, Outbrain, Newsbreak, MGID, Yahoo Native, Mediago, and RevContent for DTC, lead-gen, and affiliate brands. I run a native-advertising-only agency, so I get it: this looks like a pitch. That's why this breakdown leans on external studies, not my opinion.

What the native advertising studies actually say about brand trust

Start with the trust number, because it kills the biggest objection up front. 84% of consumers feel that advertising within the news either increases or maintains brand trust. People associate the placement with the surrounding editorial environment, and that environment is credible.

This matters because trust is a function of touch points. Think about being thirsty in a country you've never visited, walking into a strange grocery store, and seeing both Coca-Cola and a random local cola on the shelf. Most people grab the Coca-Cola. Not because it tastes objectively better, but because they've seen the brand thousands of times. Familiarity is trust.

Native advertising is a touch-point machine. People see your brand even when they don't click. The impression itself does work, because native sits at the very top of the funnel where awareness gets built. Across the platforms I buy on, that compounding effect is the quiet reason native campaigns outperform over a 30-to-90-day window rather than a single day.

Where your customers actually spend their time online

Here's the data point that reframes the whole media-buying conversation. According to a study from Google, not a native-ad vendor, users spend their online time roughly like this:

• 25% on the open web (news sites, blogs, content pages)
• 20-23% on social media (TikTok, Instagram, and the rest)
• 17% on video sites like YouTube and Netflix
• 16% on search
• 15% on shopping

The open web is the largest single slice at 25%. One quarter of all online attention happens in exactly the environment native advertising reaches. That's a bigger share than social, bigger than video, bigger than search.

And the open web has a structural advantage social channels don't: no login. To reach someone on Instagram or TikTok, they need an account on that platform and they need to be active. Almost everybody uses the open web without any user credentials at all. That's why native lets you reach the majority of people who are online, not just the subset who happen to live inside one walled garden.

If you want to map that reach onto a specific business model, the mechanics differ for DTC and dropshipping versus lead generation, but the underlying inventory is the same open web.

Native advertising is top-of-funnel and a conversion channel

The most common mistake I see is treating native as a one-trick brand-awareness play. It is a top-of-the-funnel channel, yes. But that is not the same as saying it only does awareness.

At the top of the funnel, native does something powerful: it reaches people who don't yet know they have a problem, don't know your product exists, and have never heard of your brand. The Taboola data backs this, brands that added Taboola to their media mix saw a measurable increase in top-of-mind awareness.

Then the same click does double duty. With the right landing page and the right pre-sell content, you walk a cold prospect through three steps in a single session:

1. Make them understand they have a problem.
2. Show them a solution, which is your product or service.
3. Close the deal while they're still in the moment.

Done correctly, native turns a first-touch impression into a buying customer. That's the entire reason I run an agency on nothing but native, the channel scales reach and closes sales in the same buy.

The Taboola case study: a 50% ROAS increase

No serious white paper ships without a case study, and Taboola's is the number to anchor on. Brands using Taboola achieved a 50% increase in return on ad spend, above-average CTR, and a 1.26x increase in conversions with attentive audiences.

Attentive audiences is Taboola's look-alike-style targeting, similar in spirit to a look-alike audience on social. It lets you build the top of the funnel with cold reach, then circle back with retargeting against the people who already engaged. Native is a fantastic retargeting channel for exactly that reason, the open web gives you a fresh touch point outside the social feeds your competitors are crowding.

A 50% ROAS lift is the difference between a channel you tolerate and a channel you scale. And the 1.26x conversion increase shows the close is real, not just impressions. These are the kinds of numbers I watch for when I run Taboola campaigns and Outbrain campaigns for clients, the lift shows up in the revenue sheet, not just the awareness report.

When native advertising makes the most sense in your mix

Native pays off hardest when you already have a real marketing mix. If you're running YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google and you're missing the open web's 25% of attention, you have a hole in your funnel.

Slot native in as the first-touch channel that feeds everything else. It puts new prospects into the top of the funnel at a scale social can't match, then hands warmed audiences down to your retargeting and conversion layers. The 84% trust figure means those first impressions land in a credible environment, so the prospects arrive less skeptical.

For affiliate offers, the open-web reach is the lever, you're buying volume in an environment that maintains brand trust rather than burning it. For brands, native is the awareness engine that also closes. Either way, you're not choosing between reach and conversion. You're getting both from one channel.

How to read these numbers before you scale

Don't scale on the headline 50% alone. That figure came from brands that added Taboola to an existing mix, the lift is incremental on top of channels already running. Native rewards a structured rollout: build the top of the funnel, prove the pre-sell-to-purchase path on the landing page, then layer retargeting through attentive audiences.

The studies give you the why. The 84% trust number, the 25% open-web share, the 50% ROAS lift, and the 1.26x conversion increase all point the same direction. The execution, picking the right traffic source among Taboola, Outbrain, MGID, and the hundreds of smaller players, is where the margin gets made or lost.

Watch the full breakdown

Is your account a fit for the same play?

If you're already spending on social and search but skipping the open web, you're leaving the largest 25% of online attention untouched, and likely a 50%-class ROAS lift with it. The question isn't whether native works. The studies settle that. The question is whether your offer and landing page can turn a cold first touch into a close.

Book a strategy call and we'll look at your current mix, your vertical, and whether native is the channel that scales your reach and your revenue at the same time. If you want proof first, read the case studies showing what these numbers look like on live accounts.