Yahoo!’s updated deal with Microsoft to allow Yahoo! to syphon off more of their ads away from BingAds to their own Gemini platform (part of Yahoo! Ad Manager) is going to mean a fairly profound parting of the ways between Yahoo! and Bing Ads. But perhaps the biggest single impact, outside of marketers absorbing this 3rd platform for the search market into their workflow, will be the Native ads element held within Gemini.

Firstly, for those not completely sure what Native ads are, they’re text ads with an eye-catching image that often look like headlines to stories on a news or magazine site (or are ads placed in a social networking site that fit with the overall look and feel of the site – such as sponsored Tweets and Facebook sponsored posts) and generally lead to dedicated landing pages, often that have promotional or engaging content.

Not quite as direct as search ads in selling but not quite as soft branding in aim like many display/banner ads – they are considered part of the social space but I think they straddle the two markets of social and display. Their layout is adjusted to the site they appear on and, often, the device.

The big players include Outbrain, Taboola, TripleLift, AdsNative and Nativo and the Native space has been growing at a phenomenal pace. But Yahoo! has been investing heavily in Native due to its cross-device abilities and Yahoo!’s new emphasis on mobile (since Native ads work very well on mobile) so I feel this pace could pick up another gear or two this year.

So what’s the appeal? These ads can generate more clicks per impression than the humble banner or plain text ads and are easier to place across publishers due to their flexible format. With Yahoo!, they’re a major online publisher with a massive audience as the basis for placing native ads.

The Gemini platform will allow those already migrated to search ads on there to easily expand into Native advertising. The first hook to advertisers is that you can use Yahoo!’s tracking to remarket to users via the Native ads. After this, you can expand beyond to market to people reading certain types of content.

Native ads are a much different beast from Search and general display ads because they are a distinctly softer sell. They tend to link to articles that spin around onto a call to action but the headline text of the ad can be click bait with an intriguing subject and then the subtle selling will begin. So to really pull them off, you need good content writers and it is a project in itself outside of search/GDN PPC.

Many ads just link to fairly traditional web magazine stories (like Buzzfeed in style) surrounded by other text and banner display ads because Native ads are often used by affiliates to get back in the game after the last few years of harsh treatment from search engines, so there’s a lot of competition.

However, this is ameliorated to some degree by the fact that more native ads can be shown per page than standard banners so the supply is more likely to keep up with this demand, especially since the native ads sites are often updated dozens of times per day with new pages/inventory.

Despite to the many pros and because of some cons or, at least, unfamiliarity, with Native ads, many have stayed away from dipping their toes into this market. However, once migrated to Yahoo, they should find it easier to tap into the tremendous power of Native ads. I feel this will, by the end of the year, see a huge surge in global investment in this format mainly through Gemini.