How Sharethrough Is Redefining Ads on the Web

AUSTIN — Native advertising is the big buzzword of 2013, and it's seeking to redefine the way consumers interact with ads on the web. And though just about everyone in advertising and media is talking about native ads, the concept can be hard to define and understand. In fact, there was an entire panel devoted to defining the term and how it manifests on the web at the Native Advertising Summit last month, and there still was no resolution among panelists after 30 minutes of discussion.

But well before it had a name, the idea native advertising was on the rise. One of the big players in the space is Sharethrough, which was founded at Stanford in 2008 with the lofty goal of fixing advertising by making it more thoughtfully integrated into web content and less obtrusive to consumers. Co-founder and CEO Dan Greenberg describes a native ad as one that echoes the core form or function of the site or platform — it's a promoted video on YouTube, a promoted tweet on Twitter and a Sponsored Story on Facebook.