Advertorial vs Editorial vs Native Ad: What's the Difference?

Advertorial vs editorial sounds like a choice between two kinds of article. It is not. Editorial is content a publisher writes on its own terms. An advertorial is an ad that looks like an article, and you pay for the traffic that reaches it. Then there is the native ad, the small thumbnail-and-headline unit in a feed that people click first. If you come from Meta, these terms blur fast. This post separates them, compares them on the criteria that matter to a DTC buyer, and ends with a way to test an advertorial against a plain product page without overspending.

Quick verdict

For a brand that wants to scale on Taboola or Outbrain, the practical question is rarely advertorial or editorial. Editorial coverage is earned, not bought, so you cannot scale it with a budget. The question you can act on is whether your native ad should lead to an advertorial or straight to the product page.

The native ad is neither of these. It is the container that carries your paid message into a publisher's feed. You will use it either way.

Advertorial vs editorial vs native ad at a glance

A fourth term causes confusion: sponsored content. That is usually an article a publisher writes or hosts for a brand. It sits between advertorial and editorial. The difference is covered in native advertising vs sponsored content.

Criterion 1: Who writes it and who pays

Editorial is produced by the publisher's staff. They pick the subject, the angle and the conclusion. A brand cannot pay to change what it says. If your product is mentioned, someone decided it deserved to be.

An advertorial is written by the advertiser, or on its behalf. You pay for the visits. The article format is a layout choice, not a claim of independence.

A native ad is the cheapest part to write: a headline and an image. But it carries the whole job of getting the click, so it is not a minor piece of work.

Criterion 2: Control over the message

With an advertorial you control the angle, the order of the argument, the proof you show and the call to action. That matters when your product solves a problem the reader may not know they have.

With editorial you control nothing. A journalist can leave out your best feature or add a criticism you would not have chosen. You get credibility in exchange.

With a native ad you control the promise, but only in a line or two. That promise has to match the page behind it. If the headline says one thing and the page opens on another, readers leave.

Criterion 3: Disclosure and labelling

An advertorial is an advertisement, and the page should say so. A clear label at the top, such as "ADVERTORIAL", is part of doing this properly. It also keeps you on the right side of network and platform rules, which are strict about ads disguised as independent content.

Native ads carry their own sponsored label in the feed, set by the network. Editorial needs no ad label because it is not an ad.

Some products need more. A health product, for example, may need a disclaimer on the page. Put it where it applies rather than on every page by habit. Claims need extra care here, because an article tone can make an exaggerated claim sound like fact.

Criterion 4: Trust and credibility

Independent editorial carries a kind of trust that paid content cannot copy, because the publisher has no stake in your sales. If you earn it, use it: link to it, quote it accurately, and show where it appeared.

An advertorial earns trust differently. It has to be specific. Describe the problem in the words customers use, show real review language, and say who the product is not for. A page that reads like a thin sales letter in article clothing loses the reader at the first exaggerated claim.

Do not try to make an advertorial pass as editorial. Readers notice, and it creates policy risk.

Criterion 5: Speed and scale

Editorial runs on the publisher's timetable. You can pitch, but you cannot schedule it, repeat it or raise its volume next week.

Advertorials and native ads scale with budget. You can build several advertorials, each with its own angle, and send traffic to each through the native ads. That is the main reason DTC brands use them. If one angle works for one audience, you can put more spend behind it and make another angle for the next audience. The channel is described in more detail in Taboola Ads: how they work.

Criterion 6: Measurement

An advertorial adds a step to the funnel: ad, then article, then product page, then checkout. Click-through rate on the native ad will not tell you whether the article did its job. Measure what happens after the click: clicks from the article to the product page, add-to-cart, and above all cost per purchase.

A native ad sent directly to a product page has one fewer step, which makes it simpler to read but gives the reader less context.

Editorial is hard to measure with paid-media tools. You can see referral traffic and branded search, but you cannot attribute it as neatly as a campaign.

When to choose each

Choose an advertorial when

• The product needs explaining, such as a new category, a problem people do not search for, or a higher price that needs justifying.
• You have reviews and customer language you can use as proof.
• You want to test several reasons to buy and see which one pulls.
• Your Meta ads have stopped scaling and you need a channel where the audience is in reading mode.

Choose a native ad straight to the product page when

• The product is simple and the buyer already knows what it is.
• The offer is the story: a bundle, a discount or a clear guarantee.
• You want the shortest path and the cleanest read on the numbers.

Pursue editorial when

• You have something a journalist would want to write about anyway.
• You are building long-term brand credibility rather than buying sales this month.
• You can accept losing control of the message.

These are not exclusive. Many brands run paid native ads to an advertorial while pitching editorial separately. For examples of what advertorials look like in practice, see advertorial examples.

How Nativize builds advertorials

Nativize builds and runs native ad campaigns on Taboola and Outbrain for e-commerce brands. This is how the advertorial side is built, step by step.

1. Nativize starts from the product page URL. The builder reads the product page itself, not a summary of it.
2. It collects customer reviews from the product page and from review sites. It can also take competitor pages or free-text instructions, such as "mention the 30-day guarantee".
3. From the page and the reviews it pulls out the customer's pain points and the benefits people actually mention, in their own words.
4. It proposes several marketing angles, normally five or more. An angle is a distinct reason to care, such as a different problem, audience or story. Each angle becomes its own advertorial, so angles can be tested against each other.
5. For the chosen angle, the advertorial is written as short sections: a headline, a one-line preview, the body and a closing call to action. The writing style and target reader are set before writing, not guessed.
6. Headlines are generated in sets, then graded, and only the strongest are kept. Each is checked against the character limit of the platform it will run on. Copy for Meta is also audited for wording likely to cause policy problems.
7. The product photo and brand logo are uploaded once per product and reused for every angle. Images are made or chosen per section so the picture supports the paragraph.
8. Layout is chosen separately from the copy. The two most used are a sidebar layout and a centred layout with a sticky call to action. Brand colours come from the product page.
9. Every advertorial carries an "ADVERTORIAL" label bar at the top. Health products also carry a health disclaimer, attached only where it applies.
10. The finished page is exported as a self-contained page and published on the advertiser's own domain. Tracking tags (Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, GA4 or the advertiser's own script) are added at export only, so reviewing drafts never fires real tracking.
11. Before publishing, a person can edit single paragraphs, so a small copy fix does not mean regenerating everything. Several angles can be built in one batch, then connected to Taboola campaigns.

For a wider look at the format, see our guide to the advertorial.

How to test both with a small equal budget

You cannot buy editorial, so the fair test is the one you control: the same native ad sent to an advertorial and to your product page. Here is a made-up example, not a client case: a skincare brand selling a night cream wants to know whether an article beats its product page.

1. Pick one product and one angle. In the made-up example, the angle is "dry skin that makes make-up look patchy". Do not change the product or the offer between the two cells.
2. Build the advertorial for that angle, clearly labelled, with the same offer and price as your product page.
3. Set the control: the product page, unchanged. Make sure it loads fast on mobile, because most native traffic is on phones.
4. Create two campaigns on the same network with the same native ad: identical headline and image. The only difference is the destination URL.
5. Match everything else: same budget per day, same start date, same countries, same devices, same bid approach. Keep the budget at a level you can afford to spend with no purchases, and keep it equal.
6. Decide your success metric before launch. Use cost per purchase as the main one. Track click-through from article to product page and add-to-cart as supporting signals.
7. Do not call it early. Let both cells collect enough purchases to compare, and avoid editing either campaign mid-test.
8. Read the result. If the advertorial wins, keep it and put the budget behind it. If the product page wins, your product may not need the extra step. Either answer is useful.
9. Repeat steps 2 to 8 with a new angle on the winning format. Angles are usually where the largest differences appear.

If you want to start with the channel basics first, read how to run your first Taboola campaign.

Frequently asked questions

The bottom line

Advertorial, editorial and native ad describe three different things: a paid page that reads like an article, content a publisher writes independently, and the feed unit that earns the click. For a DTC brand buying traffic, the decision that matters is whether the native ad should lead to an advertorial or to the product page. Run that as an equal-budget test, with one product, one angle and one metric. If you want to see more formats before building, browse native advertising examples, or read the complete guide to native advertising.

Keep reading

• native advertising vs sponsored content
• how to run your first Taboola campaign
• our guide to the advertorial
• native advertising examples
• the complete guide to native advertising