Nativo Announces Issuance of First U.S. Patent for Sponsored Content Distribution

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 20, 2016) - Nativo, the leading native advertising technology company, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Nativo a patent related to the distribution and embedding of sponsored content -- U.S. Patent No. 9,286,622. Benefitting from a July 2006 filing date, the patent validates the major principles that have driven Nativo's current award-winning platform and branded content solutions that have now been used by more than 400 brands and 400 publishers.

"For a long time now, we've gone to great lengths to take a thoughtful, technology-driven approach to scaling and measuring the delivery and performance of sponsored content with the ultimate goal of building a better ecosystem for publishers, advertisers, and consumers. That mission drove us to think about many unsolved problems that required a new, counterintuitive approach. Our innovations ultimately led to the rapid adoption of our platform among major publishers," said Justin Choi, CEO at Nativo. "We continue to lead and develop, building on a product roadmap that will help define the future of digital advertising."

Choi originally filed the patent independently on June 29, 2006. The patent was ultimately granted by USPTO to a publication in 2013 where Nativo is assigned, long after Choi had founded Nativo in 2010. The awarded patent reflects Choi's commitment to digital technology innovation for more than a decade -- before the term 'native' became a household term in digital media, a year before the iPhone 1 launched and ushered in the mobile era, before Jonah Peretti founded Buzzfeed, and before platforms such as Twitter publicly launched and Facebook extended its network beyond educational institutions.

Among other useful and innovative features, the patent highlights the following:

• The automated distribution of sponsored content embedded among non-sponsored content, posts, news articles, and other formats -- separate from banner ads.
• The placement of this sponsored content onto one or more sites based upon the relatedness of the sponsored content to the non-sponsored content.
• The defining of sponsored content as containing many similar features (the look and feel) of surrounding non-sponsored content with at least one distinguishing feature that provides consumers with transparency between sponsored and editorial content.
• The ability to measure user interaction with the sponsored content and generate user profile information based on engagement behavior to improve campaign performance.

Even in 2013, when many in the industry were still debating if native could ever be done programmatically, Nativo had already developed a platform that seamlessly delivered sponsored content into news feeds across multiple related sites. And Nativo's brand and publisher clients have been taking advantage of viewability, engagement metrics, anti-fraud measures, automated A/B testing, and cross-screen distribution long before these buzzwords became common practices in digital advertising media.

"This patent is the result of Justin's long term vision and further evidence of Nativo's technology-first approach and ability to tackle the hard problems," said Alan Patricof, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Greycroft, an early investor at Nativo. "It's this approach and focus on innovation that's led to their phenomenal growth. We're excited to be a part of it and can't wait to see what they create next."

About Nativo
Nativo is the leading advertising technology platform for brand advertisers and publishers to scale, automate, and measure native ads.

For brands, Nativo is the ultimate content advertising platform that combines automation and insights with high quality reach to scale and optimize engagement with brand content. For media companies, Nativo provides a complete native technology stack that makes it easy to sell, deploy, and optimize native ads across their media properties expanding their revenue potential while delivering a better, non-interruptive experience for their audiences.

More than 400 brands and 400 publishers leverage Nativo's platform to power their next-generation digital advertising. Learn more at www.nativo.net.