Native advertising is a valuable way for ecommerce brands to drive sales and get new customers at a large scale. With native ads, you can reach a huge audience across top publisher websites. This gives you a unique opportunity to engage consumers with relevant, non-disruptive ad experiences that blend right into the content they're already looking at.
However, being successful with native ads for ecommerce isn't as easy as just launching a campaign and watching the sales come in. It takes a strategic approach, attention-grabbing creatives, and constant optimization to actually make it profitable and scalable.
In this article, we'll look into proven tactics and approaches for promoting ecommerce offers on native ad platforms like Taboola. We'll also share insights and case studies from XEVIO, one of the biggest native advertising agencies that has scaled several e-commerce brands to 5-figures per day in ad spend on the Taboola native ads platform.
The current state of native advertising
Over the past few years, the native advertising space has become increasingly competitive and expensive. Here are some eye-opening stats on rising costs:
- CPMs on Taboola have increased 30% in the US, 20% in Spain, and 25% in Germany between 2020 and 2023
- CPMs on top Taboola publishers have risen over 200% in the last 4 years
- CPC costs are also up across the board
This means that approaches that worked well a few years ago are no longer as effective today. Affiliates and advertisers need to adapt and innovate to succeed in the current environment.
However, with the right mix of creative approaches and media buying strategies, it's still very much possible to drive strong ROAS with native ads at scale.
To get a clear understanding of how native ads are performing for e-commerce brands. We shall take a look at native ads campaign insights shared by Nadim Kuttab, the CEO of XEVIO, a native ads agency that spends over $100m on native ads, particularly on Taboola. And on top of that, we will look at a case study of their top performing campaigns.
4-Step campaign set-up strategy for Taboola native ads
Last year, one of XEVIO's biggest Taboola campaigns reached €65,000 per day in ad spend. The campaign was promoting an ecommerce product that was targeting the German market.
To help affiliates and media buyers achieve such success with native ads with e-commerce, Nadim laid out a 4-step process for launching and scaling campaigns on Taboola:
Step 1: Pre-campaign development
- Prepare 50 different ad variations, with a mix of 10 different headlines and 5 different images
- Pick 1 product to advertise, and have 1 to 5 different offer page options ready to go
- Create 2-3 unique landing pages with different content and angles
Step 2: Initial testing ($50-100 per day)
- Launch your mobile and desktop ad campaigns
- Use the 8-10 best ad variations to start
- Quickly expand to testing 12 ad variations per week
- Stop running the ads that aren't performing well based on early click and conversion data
- Continue sending traffic to those that are performing well
- Try to complete this step within 2-3 weeks
Step 3: Growth & Scale ($100-5,000 per day)
- Increase your budgets quickly once you hit your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals
- Keep testing 4-6 ads per campaign, replacing the low-performers
- Only change up to 20% of your landing pages at a time
- Keep finding new winning ad ideas before your existing ones get worn out
Step 4: Maintain scale ($5,000+ per day)
- Slow down your testing, and create duplicate campaigns for any major changes
- Focus on optimizing for stability, while still developing new ad assets
- Use 'target CPA' and 'max conversions' bidding strategies
- Dedicate up to 90% of your total spend to the ads and pages that are proven winners
While progressing through these stages, Nadim stresses moving spend quickly and condensing testing windows. Rather than pacing tests over months, XEVIO aims to cycle through ideas within 2-3 weeks, enabling faster iterations and optimization. The key is balancing the exploitation of proven winners with ongoing exploration and development of new angles.
When to pivot or pause
Even if you have a solid process in place, not every product or campaign is going to work well with native ads.
Nadim's advice is that if after 2 weeks and spending at least $5,000, your campaign is still performing at least 2 times worse than your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goal - even after trying out lots of different ad content and variations - then it's probably not going to get any better.
At that point, continuing to spend more money on it is unlikely to suddenly make it work. It's better to either completely rework the campaign with a totally new approach, or just give up on that product or idea and move on to something else.
As Nadim advises, "Don't add budget to a failing concept - either rework it or move on."
XEVIO's e-commerce growth formula
Even though the 4-step process Nadim outlined provides a clear roadmap for running native ad campaigns, being successful with native ads requires having the right team structure and diversifying across different products and business models.
Team structure
Instead of hiring a bunch of junior media buyers, XEVIO focuses on getting experienced, senior-level media buying talent. Each of those media buyers has a dedicated 5-person "pod" supporting them, this includes:
- A creative director
- A copywriter
- A designer
- A CRO specialist
- A web developer
This allows the media buyers to focus on the high-level strategic work of developing and optimizing the campaigns, without getting bogged down in the day-to-day asset creation. It also ensures they're consistently testing fresh angles and creatives.
Revenue diversification
XEVIO uses a "barbell" strategy - they have two main business models they focus on:
- Agency model (70% of revenue): Running high-volume lead generation campaigns for other brands, at relatively low but stable profit margins.
- Affiliate model (30% of revenue): Promoting a mix of lead gen and ecommerce offers, which can be more volatile but have higher potential upside.
Within the affiliate side, ecommerce is the biggest part (over 50% of revenue). But to help stabilize the affiliate cash flow, they also syndicate those e-commerce offers out to a network of other affiliate partners.
The idea is that the steadier agency cash flows help balance out the higher volatility of the affiliate ecommerce side. As Nadim says, "Nothing works 100% of the time in native ads, so by having different products and business models, we can weather the ups and downs better."
Campaign development process
In addition to the high-level 'how-to' guide, Nadim shares processes for the key components of e-commerce native ad campaigns:
Offer selection & pricing:
The foundation is the product itself and how it's positioned. Nadim says the offer has to be compelling on its own, even before any marketing tactics are applied. If the "barrier" for the customer to convert is too high, no amount of optimization will make it work.
When evaluating offers, they consider things like:
- Pricing: Is it affordable for the target audience? Higher prices create more friction.
- Relative value: Does the product clearly deliver good value for the price? The higher the perceived value, the better it will convert.
- Competitive positioning: How unique and differentiated is the product compared to alternatives? Unique selling points help justify the price and motivate people to take action.
The goal is to structure an offer that's as close to a "no-brainer" as possible for the target customer. Even with an optimized funnel, a mediocre offer will still get mediocre results.
Landing page development
With the offer in place, the key task is translating the product's unique value and benefits into a narrative that engages visitors and makes a compelling case for action.
Nadim recommends a 4-part story arc:
- Introduce a problem relevant to the reader
- Explain why it matters and what's at stake
- Introduce the product as the solution
- Reinforce value prop and drive action with FOMO + urgency
Rather than just listing features, the landing page should help the visitor envision how the product will improve their life by solving a relatable problem or helping them avoid a looming risk.
To further drive engagement and action, XEVIO employs two key tactics:
- Visualizations: Replacing walls of text with infographics, graphs, and other visual elements to convey key points and make content more skimmable/digestible
- Gamified CTAs: Replacing a single CTA button with dynamic quizzes or questionnaires to boost engagement (e.g. 'What's your age', 'What's your goal', 'Choose your state')
These elements have driven 2-3X lifts in click-through rates in XEVIO's tests. The key is making the experience as interactive as possible while still being relevant to the product.
Nadim also stresses the importance of analytics and split testing in optimizing landing pages. XEVIO uses Microsoft Clarity (a free heatmap and session recording tool) to identify opportunities for improvement in landing pages and then split-tests new variations to 10-20% of their traffic.
Ad creative development
The final piece of the puzzle is developing ad creative that drives quality clicks by communicating the product's value prop to the right audience. When brainstorming ad concepts, Nadim focuses on two overarching questions:
- Who is the target customer?
- What unique problem does this product solve for them?
With those inputs, the task is developing a high-impact hook and CTA that filter for relevant audiences. While there is no perfect formula, generally the best-performing ads either:
- Speak to a highly relevant but underserved audience segment
- Highlight the product's unique benefits or use case
- Communicate a rare/compelling discount or special offer
The goal is capturing attention and driving action from the few seconds of exposure on the publisher sites, filtering out as many irrelevant clicks as possible. As Nadim notes, a high CTR with a low-quality audience delivers worse results than a lower CTR of only relevant prospects.
To accelerate ad creative development, XEVIO leverages two Taboola features:
- AI image generator: Quickly generates a range of image variations based on a text query, enabling rapid testing of visual elements
- AI headline rephraser: Automatically generates alternate headline phrasings with a single click, helping uncover new winning copy angles
By combining these tools with an in-house design team, XEVIO maintains a steady stream of ad concepts to fuel ongoing creative testing.
E-commerce Case Study #1: Scaling from $0 to $50K/day
To illustrate these principles in action, Nadim shares a detailed case study of an ecommerce client that scaled from $0 to $50,000 per day in revenue within their first 2 weeks on Taboola:
Client background:
- Before launching on Taboola, they had spent about $3,000 on native/Taboola ads
- Their ads were generating a return of only 0.5x on their ad spend
- Their average daily revenue from their online store was $50,000
Launch on Taboola (Day 1):
- XEVIO developed 3 unique landing pages for them
- They created 30 ads and uploaded 10 across mobile and desktop
- They set a daily budget of $300 per campaign
- Result: They achieved a 1.2x return on ad spend (ROAS)
Scaling (Day 7):
- They identified the best-performing landing page and created 3 variations to test
- They uploaded 34 new ad, and turned off 28 low-performing ones
- They scaled the daily budget up to $4,000
- Result: They achieved a 1.9x ROAS
Optimization (Day 14):
- They had one top-performing landing page with 2 variations running
- They tested a total of 81 ads, and turned off 75 of them
- They increased the daily budget to $15,000
- Result: They achieved a 2.4x ROAS, and their daily store revenue increased to $160,000 (a 3.2x increase from their pre-launch average)
While the Taboola ads were directly generating $51,000 in daily revenue with a 2.4x return, their overall store revenue increased by over $100,000 per day compared to before they launched the Taboola campaign.
Nadim estimates that at least 50-75% of this overall revenue increase was attributable to the success of the Taboola native ad campaign, due to the increased brand exposure and traffic it drove.
E-commerce Case Study #2: Seasonal Offer
In January 2023, XEVIO managed a seasonal lead generation campaign in Germany, with a peak daily budget of up to €65,000.
In the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas, the XEVIO team pre-tested:
- 22 different landing page variations
- Over 100 unique ad concepts
By the time the holidays were over, they had refined the campaign down to:
- 1 winning landing page
- 30 proven ads
With these high-performing assets ready to go, XEVIO then progressively increased their daily budgets in the days after Christmas:
- Dec 24: €19,900
- Dec 28: €31,900
- Jan 2: €63,500
By the second week of January, this campaign had become the 4th largest Taboola advertiser in Germany, reaching hundreds of thousands of potential customers per day.
The key to their success was that XEVIO had developed this "arsenal" of tested creative assets in advance. This enabled them to start the new year with a high-performing campaign from day one.
Even though ad costs (CPMs) tend to rise during competitive seasonal periods, XEVIO's preparation allowed them to secure more top-of-feed placements than their competitors. This generated strong returns for them, despite the higher overall costs.
Additional tips & tricks for Taboola Native Ads
Beyond the core 4-step process and campaign frameworks, Nadim offers these additional tips for maximizing performance on Taboola:
- Add multiple backup image options for any video or GIF ads to increase your reach. XEVIO often creates multiple versions of the same video/GIF asset, each with a unique thumbnail image.
- Rather than narrowly targeting specific websites (whitelisting) or excluding certain sites (blacklisting), start with a broad "run-of-network" approach. XEVIO has found that getting broad reach with relevant creative generally works better than tight targeting, except for push notification traffic, which rarely converts well for ecommerce.
- Consider using both "max conversions" and "target CPA" bid strategies once a campaign is out of the initial learning phase. The best option can vary depending on the product and location, so it's worth testing both strategies once the campaign has scaled up.
- Use Taboola's AI tools to rapidly iterate on your creative:
- Their "AI Image Generator" can produce dozens of new image variations just from a text description, allowing you to test visual ideas quickly.
- The "AI Headline Rephraser" generates alternate versions of any headline you input, sparking new copy ideas.
In addition to Taboola's native tools, XEVIO also uses 3 other platforms to measure, analyze, and optimize their campaigns:
- Voluum for tracking campaign performance and attribution
- Microsoft Clarity to gain insights on user behavior and engagement on their landing pages
- LeadsBridge to capture leads and sync them with their systems
Conclusion
As evidenced by XEVIO's own explosive growth and the client case studies shared, native ad platforms like Taboola remain a powerful channel for ecommerce marketers who are willing to invest the time and resources in continual creative development and testing.
While ROAS and scale are harder to achieve than in years past due to mature competition and rising CPMs, Nadim believes that by adopting a 'test fast, kill fast, scale fast' mentality, while developing compelling offers and a steady stream of fresh creative, ecommerce brands of all sizes can still drive profitable growth through native ads.
Although not every e-commerce brand or product will be viable for native ads, ignoring the channel altogether is likely the most costly mistake an ecommerce marketer can make in 2024. As Nadim concludes, "If you haven't seriously tested Taboola and native, you're likely leaving massive growth opportunities on the table."
