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When I was recently asked why native advertising is in decline, I didn't blame zero-click search, artificial intelligence, or the platforms - although we all know they play a role. I said something less comfortable: for too long, we have been selling native advertising in a suboptimal way. We’ve been placing it too close to performance and ignoring its ties to sister disciplines. It took falling numbers for us to admit it.
Look at what is happening around us. Internationally, native advertising spent several years growing and evolving at a relatively comfortable pace. Then came 2025, when signs of stagnation began to emerge. The need to accelerate product reinvention became clearer.
The discipline is still very much alive. It continues to win awards for creativity and strategy. Yet the post-pandemic moment (when authentic, purpose-led brand stories seemed to have real cultural momentum) now feels partly overshadowed by the fireworks of AI-generated work. These visually spectacular pieces can be easy to imitate, replicate and forget.
And content for AI agents is already here: in a recent article, David Lahoz (one of the leading experts in AI and advertising in the Spanish-speaking world) explains how brand mentions are already being bought to influence what AI assistants recommend.
One agency sells Reddit mentions for between $25 and $71 each, and some reportedly show up in ChatGPT answers in less than a day. Muck Rack’s analysis of more than 25 million citations used by AI assistants classified 84% of them as earned media.
Whatever we think of that exact classification, the direction of travel is difficult to ignore: the way content earns attention, authority and recommendation is changing. Fast.
We have excellent professionals. What we have lacked, until now, is a sufficiently connected space in which to discuss and navigate these changes together.
There are now new distribution options and possibilities for branded content, along with new commercial opportunities for native advertising. The thing we need is an opportunity for peers to sit together and discuss the changing industry.
Other markets are already doing this. In Sweden, the IAB taskforce on content advertising is developing shared KPIs so buyers can compare results across publishers. Advertisers present cases measured from the read through to business outcomes.
Within the Native Advertising Institute community, professionals from studios across Europe openly acknowledge that they are questioning the processes they inherited.
This is the moment to talk. And some of the most valuable conversations happen when peers simply sit together.
If you’re interested in learning more about the upcoming opportunities for industry events based on creating a forum for open discussion within branded content and native advertising, keep an eye out for updates coming very soon…
