• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, March 2, 2016

Apart from the development that no one can ignore -- that Yahoo officially put its core business up for sale in late February -- the company recently reported on developments within its Yahoo Gemini native advertising platform.

Yannis Dosios, vice president, platform & exchange at Yahoo, Inc. analyzed data on the company’s native ad platform Yahoo Gemini.  Yahoo created an infographic to display the data, which tracked results during 2015. As of Q4 2015, there were 350 billion native ad requests for third-party mobile app inventory on Yahoo Gemini, accounting for more than half of Yahoo Gemini impressions.

Data also shows that native advertising is a global phenomenon. For example, there were 192 billion native ad requests in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa); 75 billion in APAC (Asia-Pacific); 42 billion in North America; and 60 billion in Latin America.

Yahoo’s data revealed that CPMs for native are higher: eCPMs for third-party native apps were in the $3.50 to $4 range in the U.S. and more than $2 in the rest of the world.

The earliest adopters of Yahoo Gemini native advertising were messaging apps, according to the data. Other verticals jumped in, so by Q4 2015, utility, entertainment, photo and social verticals accounted for more than 50% of native ad request inside third-party apps. Perhaps most importantly, native seems to appeal to all demographics, though  25- to 34-year-olds and 35- to 44-year-olds saw the most engagement, with 32% and 38% respectively.

The data helped Yahoo obtain a holistic view of native growth over the year, understand the global reach of Yahoo App Publishing and gather insights about native advertising adoption and performance.

“As the digital advertising industry continues to mature, we're seeing exponential growth of native ad formats on Yahoo and on leading third-party mobile applications using Yahoo's native technology,” Dosios said via email. “Native has proven to be effective in reaching key audiences across multiple verticals and demographics, including millennials and Gen-Xers, who are constantly consuming content on their smartphones.”

Yahoo, it seems, is learning what others in the industry are seeing: Native advertising and content often delivers better brand engagement and conversion for advertisers, higher revenue per thousand impressions for publishers -- and often, a better experience for consumers.

Yahoo App Publishing launched for third-party mobile app publishers in Jan 2015. The research was conducted by reviewing all of Yahoo App Publishing's data points and third-party mobile app publishers that monetize ad inventory via Yahoo Gemini advertising in 2015.