Sharethrough & The Trade Desk's New Partnership Sets Bold Course For Programmatic Native in 2016

New integration shows off the strong possibilities for growth around programmatic native advertising

SAN FRANCISCO, March 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sharethrough, the largest native advertising Supply Side Platform (SSP) and The Trade Desk, the fastest growing demand side platform (DSP) in the industry, launched a new native advertising RTB integration for alpha buyers at today's IAB Programmatic Marketplace conference in New York.

Why This Matters for Programmatic Buyers
Native advertising is moving further away from its custom-built past. With Sharethrough and The Trade Desk's new partnership, buyers will be able to purchase in-feed ads through The Trade Desk's Omnichannel RTB platform, giving them the resources they need to run large-scale targeted campaigns that use native's content-first approach. Marketers will be able to access massive audiences with in-feed ad placements across hundreds of premium sites and apps through the Sharethrough Exchange (STX).

With programmatic native advertising, buyers can take advantage of the benefits of native in-feed ads on a broader scale than ever before. Native in-feed ads are read differently than traditional banner ads: consumers spend exponentially more time processing them and on average they have clickthrough rates 10 times higher than banner advertising and drive 18 percent higher purchase intent.

How Native Ads Are Traded Programmatically
Sharethrough and The Trade Desk's integration will follow the IAB's OpenRTB Specification Version 2.3 guidelines. The 2.3 spec, launched in February 2015, was the first IAB standard to support native ads, providing common parameters for native advertisements to be broken down into components and traded programmatically. 

Sharethrough's VP of Product Management Curt Larson was recently the tech lead of the native RTB working group that developed a Native 1.1 extension for the IAB 2.4 specifications, expected to be released this year. This new protocol will help bring even more specificity and structure to programmatic native and drive even broader growth.

What Sharethrough and The Trade Desk's Leadership Think
"It's time to retire the myth that native advertising is something that can only ever be custom executed. With programmatic native now fully standardized through OpenRTB, 2016 is set up to be the year that native becomes a core element of the programmatic landscape. This new integration will help brands build major programmatic native campaigns into their media strategies, engaging more meaningfully with their audience while taking advantage of The Trade Desk's independent and industry-leading suite of buy-side tools," said Sharethrough's Curt Larson. "The Trade Desk works with some of the most sophisticated buyers in ad-tech, which makes them an amazing partner."

"Programmatic advertising is about delivering an organic, personal ad experience, and Native is a natural outgrowth of that capability," said Tim Sims VP of Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk. "Sharethrough's access to premium native inventory is a great asset for buyers' ability to scale campaigns successfully. We're so pleased to offer our clients the ability to buy against Sharethrough's inventory as part of their holistic, omni-channel campaign strategy to deliver a more personalized user experience."

The Market Potential for Programmatic Native Advertising
According to Business Insider, spending on native advertising is expected to reach at least $21 billion in 2018, with 15% of all online advertising budgets dedicated to native by 2020. RTB revenue is estimated to reach over $11 billion in 2016, expected to account for almost half the digital advertising market by 2020.

About Sharethrough
Sharethrough is all-in-one native advertising software for publishers, app developers and advertisers. The company's flagship product, Sharethrough For Publishers (SFP), is a modern supply side platform that enables publishers to manage their entire native advertising revenue stack. The Sharethrough Exchange (STX), which is the largest marketplace for native ads, brings unprecedented cross-platform scale to content publishers and marketers. STX currently powers over four billion monthly impressions, making any audience reachable with impactful native ads. Founded in 2008, Sharethrough's headquarters are in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, Detroit, London and Canada.