Most online publishers are offering native advertising to clients, but agreement on the definition and characteristics of what it entails remain varied.

Here come some North American statistics, but please bear with us as they paint the picture of the state of native advertising in the US, where it is probably most developed.

What is native advertising? Good question, and that’s the point. Figures from the Online Publishers Association found that while most online publishers had rolled out offerings of native adverting, variation exists as to how each publisher defines it.

Emarketer published the findings this week which saw just under three-quarters of publishers currently offering native advertising, with just 10% holding out and saying they weren’t planning to introduce native ad ‘units’.

Almost all respondents agreed that ‘native’ meant advertising material that demonstrated ‘integration into the design of the publisher’s site and lives on the same domain.’

Just under nine out of 10 also said that native advertising was ‘content produced in conjunction with the advertiser, or by the advertiser, that runs within the editorial stream’. 79% believe native advertising must be labelled to clearly distinguish it.