Last week, Bing launched the beta version of Bing Native Ads, available for placement on Microsoft’s online portal MSN.

The native ads are available on the same platform as Bing Ads and use the same advertiser interface and much of the same targeting as the search ads.  Reporting and conversion metrics are also integrated to help make the native ads easy to add to existing campaigns or accounts.

While traditional Bing ads appear in response to search queries on Bing, the native ads will appear as users surf through the MSN site.  Bing’s native ads will be targeted using the same user intent signals that are used for Bing ads and include using prior search history, past clicks on ads for products or services, and subject matter content related to the page being viewed.

For example, as a user browses through the Auto section of MSN, sponsored posts will appear in the same format as other content on the page.  In the below illustration, a user sees links to articles from auto industry media such as Motor Trend and also sees a sponsored post in the same format from Volkswagen promoting its new hardtop convertible Eos model.

In the below example, a user reading an article about running and fitness sees a sponsored post in the stream of the article that offers free shipping on athletic shoes and apparel from Zappos.com.  Bing Native Ads takes the interest of the user on content related to sports and fitness to serve up the targeted ad.

While Bing Native Ads is only available on MSN right now, it is expected its availability will broaden at least to other affiliated properties.  Just last month, Microsoft and AOL signed a new 10 year agreement replacing the previous arrangement AOL had with Google to supply search listings and ads.  Microsoft also gave its display ad sales business to AOL.

While AOL doesn’t have a huge amount of search traffic, about 1% of the US market, it does own some significant media properties in auto, entertainment, finance, news and tech.  AOL’s brands include Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Daily Finance, Moviefone, MapQuest, and others.

It seems a natural progression for Bing Native Ads to integrate sponsored posts into these popular media sites, and that would significantly increase the exposure to the service.

Forrester Research estimates that native advertising will become 6.7% of total online display spending in 2015 increasing to 15% by 2020.

To learn more about Native Advertising, check out LSA’s free Native Advertising report on LSAInsights.com and learn about some related publisher liability issues to look out for in one of my earlier posts.