Yahoo is taking its native ads out of their native lands and putting them into third-party publishers.
In an effort to get its in-stream native ads more exposure, Yahoo is placing them as recommended content at the bottom of articles, videos and blog posts on other publishing platforms. In this way, it’s following the revenue model of content recommendation engines such as Outbrain and Taboola (the source of many click-baity articles you see at the bottom of popular websites.)
However, AdAge reports that unlike Outbrain, Yahoo is mixing its native ads (which look like regular articles) with the publisher’s own content. For example, let’s say The Hub’s content recommendation was powered by Yahoo. If you were reading an article on The Hub, upon getting to the end you would see thumbnails of other articles fromThe Hub recommended for you, and one thumbnail of an article which is actually a Yahoo native ad. Publishers get a cut of the revenue every time somebody clicks on that native ad.
That’s a big difference from Outbrain or Taboola, which recommends third-party content on other people’s websites. In this way, Yahoo is incentivizing publishers to use its recommendation engine over others, since it promotes their own content, and gives them a cut of the revenue.
Here’s what the recommendation widget looks like for SB Nation, one of the initial users of Yahoo’s content recommendation engine.
As you’ll notice, it says “Powered by Yahoo for Omar.” Yahoo says the content recommender will personalize its feed (and ads) depending on who’s reading the article, especially if they have a Yahoo profile and have been browsing sites within its network.
