The State of Native Advertising Report: 2026 Findings

The State of Native Advertising is OpenAdLibrary's recurring report on the live native advertising ecosystem, built from direct observation rather than surveys. As of July 2026 the underlying index holds 725,882 live native ad creatives from 29,257 advertisers across 49 networks, backed by 6.8 million ad observations and 1.3 million landing-page captures. This page summarizes the current edition's key findings, explains how the data is collected, and covers how media buyers, publishers, and journalists can use and cite it.

Why another industry report — and how this one differs#

Most native advertising reports are built from surveys and self-reported spend projections: ask a panel of marketers what they plan to budget, extrapolate, publish a curve. Useful for narratives, weak on ground truth — nobody audits the answers, and the ad-level reality (which creatives, which advertisers, which networks) never appears.

This report inverts the method. It counts what is actually serving: live placements captured continuously from the networks' own delivery systems, deduplicated to unique creatives, resolved to advertisers and landing pages. When the report says a network carries a certain volume of live creatives, that is an observation, not an estimate. The trade-off is scope — we report what we can see, and say so plainly where coverage is partial. The approach is the same one that powers open ad transparency generally; the capture mechanics are detailed in how ad spy tools capture native ads.

Key findings from the current edition#

1. The Microsoft feed is the largest single surface we observe#

The Microsoft Audience Network (MSN feed inventory) accounts for 281,839 live creatives in the index — more than Taboola's 206,145, and far ahead of everything else. Most media buyers still equate "native" with Taboola and Outbrain; the observed inventory says the MSN feed deserves a first-class seat in that conversation.

2. Health, finance, and insurance dominate demand#

Across the classified index, three verticals sit within a few thousand creatives of each other at the top — health, finance, and insurance — all high-LTV, compliance-sensitive categories where a converting funnel supports aggressive click buying. That's a structural fact of the channel, not a seasonal blip.

The mix also shifts by network — entertainment dominates MGID while insurance leads Outbrain — and the vertical-by-vertical breakdown lives in top native ad verticals.

3. Winning creatives run for weeks, and their themes are stable#

The longest-running cohort in the current index has been serving for 38 days straight, and its composition is telling: retiree cost-cutting listicles, home-improvement rebate offers, hearing aids, retirement-planning content — evergreen problems for an older, feed-reading audience. Persistence is the strongest public profitability signal there is, and the persistent themes barely change between editions. The running list is maintained at the longest-running native ads.

4. The advertiser pool is wide, not just deep#

29,257 distinct advertisers stand behind the index — an average of roughly 25 live creatives each. Native is not a handful of mega-affiliates; it's a long tail of brands, lead-gen operators, publishers, and DTC companies, with the top of the market mapped in top native advertisers by network.

5. The mid-tier is a real second market#

MGID (62,765 live creatives) and Revcontent (15,789) together carry meaningful volume with materially lower entry bars than the premium duopoly. For advertisers, that's a testing ground; for publishers below Taboola's traffic gate, it's a monetization path. The supply routes connecting all of these players are traced in the native ad supply chain, explained.

Methodology in brief#

• Collection. Live placements are captured continuously from network delivery endpoints across geos and device types, publisher-side — the ads real users are served.
• Deduplication. Creatives are deduplicated by perceptual image hashing plus title matching, so counts reflect unique creatives, not raw impressions.
• Resolution. Each creative's click path is followed to the advertiser's landing page, and observations are labeled with network, geo, device, and dates first/last seen.
• Limits, stated honestly. We observe placements, not budgets: no spend figures, no CTRs, no conversion data. Coverage differs by network and geo, so cross-network comparisons should be read as observed-index comparisons, which is what they are.

Reading the numbers correctly#

Observed-index data rewards careful reading, so three interpretation rules apply to every figure above:

• Creative counts are not spend share. A network carrying 200,000 live creatives does not necessarily transact more dollars than one carrying 60,000 — creative volume reflects advertiser count, testing culture, and network mechanics as much as budget. Treat the counts as demand breadth, not revenue estimates.
• Deduplication changes what "an ad" means. Because creatives are deduplicated by image and title, one row can represent an ad seen thousands of times across dozens of publishers. The 6.8 million ad observations sit underneath the 725,882 creatives; which layer you want depends on whether you're asking "what exists?" or "what's being pushed hardest?"
• Coverage is a denominator. Every independent index sees a sample of the ecosystem, and samples differ by geo and network. Within-index comparisons (network A vs network B, this month vs last month) are robust; extrapolations to "the entire industry" should carry error bars nobody can honestly compute.

These caveats aren't weaknesses — they're what separates auditable data from marketing decks. A number you can't interrogate is a slogan.

How to use the report#

• Media buyers: validate network choice against observed demand in your vertical before committing budget — if your category barely exists on a network, that absence is information. Then steal the longevity signal for creative research: the report's longest-running cohort is a pre-tested creative brief.
• Publishers: see which networks' demand actually fills placements on sites like yours before signing a widget contract, and what ad quality your readers will actually be shown next to your content.
• Competitive intelligence and brand teams: the advertiser-level data underneath the aggregates shows who entered your category, on which networks, and with what angles — the report is the map, the live library is the territory.
• Journalists and researchers: the data is free to cite with attribution to OpenAdLibrary and a link to the source page. No email gate, no PDF paywall — the report is published as a living web resource that updates as the index grows, rather than an annual snapshot that ages for twelve months.

Where the full data lives#

The complete current edition, with every table and chart, is the State of Native Advertising 2026 study, and the companion native advertising statistics roundup keeps the headline numbers in one place. Everything in both pages is drawn from the live index, which you can query yourself through the ad intelligence platform — the same filters (network, vertical, geo, longevity) used to build the report. Developers who want the raw feed can pull it through the native ad data API.

Survey decks tell you what the industry says about itself. Live capture tells you what it does. When the two disagree — and on questions like "which network is biggest" or "which verticals dominate," they often do — trust the one you can verify.