Push vs native — which has higher CPC in Tier-1 GEOs?

Native, materially. Tier-1 push CPCs sit at £0.04–£0.15 in 2026 depending on subscriber recency and GEO; Tier-1 native CPCs on Taboola and Outbrain (now Teads-Outbrain post-merger) sit at £0.20–£0.80, with the affiliate-budget native panels (MGID, RevContent, Adsterra Native, PropellerAds Native, Mondiad Native) clearing at £0.10–£0.40. The premium reflects the content-context value native delivers — the impression sits inside publisher editorial real estate rather than as a notification overlay.

Which converts better, push or native?

Native has the higher click-quality; push has the higher click-volume. Native CTRs sit at 0.15–0.6% across Taboola and Outbrain in 2026; push CTRs sit at 2–8% on fresh subscriber lists across PropellerAds, RichAds and Adsterra. Different conversion characteristics: native users have higher day-30 retention and higher LTV because the audience selection is content-context-driven; push users have higher day-0 conversion volume because the subscriber-list is opt-in-pre-qualified for the format. For long-LTV offers (subscription, SaaS, recurring iGaming), native wins; for impulse-and-direct-response, push wins.

Which is better for iGaming?

Push for direct-response acquisition and retargeting; native for regulated-market brand-discovery and high-value sportsbook brand. Push dominates Tier-1 iGaming retargeting against opted-in subscriber audiences; native dominates the brand-discovery layer in regulated markets (UK GC, Italy ADM) where the in-content placement carries the operator brand into consumer media at compliant creative quality. The honest mid-tier iGaming operator runs both — push for retargeting, native for top-of-funnel brand consideration.

Which format has more inventory in 2026?

Native, by impression volume — the Taboola-and-Teads-Outbrain ecosystem clears tens of billions of in-feed sponsored-content impressions a day across the open web. Push subscriber lists across the major networks (PropellerAds, RichAds, Adsterra, HilltopAds) collectively serve 1–2 billion subscribers. But the comparison is misleading because most native inventory is bought at brand-budget CPCs that affiliate budgets compete on only at the bottom of the auction; push inventory is competed almost entirely by affiliate budgets so the available-supply-at-affiliate-prices is closer than the raw numbers suggest.

How does cookie deprecation affect each format?

Native is more affected by attribution-window compression than by audience-identity loss — the content-context audience selection is publisher-mix-driven, not cookie-graph-driven, but the conversion-attribution post-click depends on cookies that the Privacy Sandbox cycle compromised. Push is more affected on the audience-acquisition side — opt-in subscriber-list construction has historically used cookie-graph data for lookalike modelling. Google's 22 July 2024 reversal on Chrome cookie deprecation reduced the urgency on both; it didn't reverse the directional pressure. Networks that built first-party-data clean rooms preserved more functionality.

Can I run both formats from the same network?

Yes, partially. PropellerAds, Adsterra, RichAds, HilltopAds, Mondiad and adsy.tech all run both push and native panels with shared sub-ID and postback infrastructure. The advantage is operational; the disadvantage is that the high-quality native inventory (Taboola, Teads-Outbrain) sits outside the affiliate-network category — bought through DSPs or directly. 'Native' on an affiliate network is a different product than 'native' through Taboola: same format-family, different audience-context, different price-band.

Which format is more fraud-prone?

Push has more historic fraud exposure on the subscriber-list side (purchased lists, stale opt-ins, double-opted-in-to-anything-that-moved subscribers); native has more on the click-fraud side (bot-driven click inflation against affiliate-budget content-recommendation panels). The 2025 affiliate-fraud baseline of ~9% applies to both. Networks with documented fraud-block disclosure are the honest comparison floor. Taboola and Teads-Outbrain have their own first-party verification layer; the affiliate-network native panels rely on the network's general fraud-block infrastructure.

Format comparison · Updated 25 May 2026

Push vs native ads in 2026: head-to-head comparison of cost, conversion, vertical-fit, and which to pick for your offer

An independent format comparison of push notifications and native advertising — CPC and CPM distributions, conversion economics, vertical-fit profiles, GEO depth, scale ceilings, and which buyer profile each format actually fits. Methodology disclosed, named tradeoffs, explicit anti-recommendations.

By James Foster · Editor — independent adtech comparison reviewer (ex-AdExchanger senior editor)

I'm James. Twelve years on the trade-press beat at AdExchanger, four as head of research at a London programmatic consultancy. The push-versus-native comparison sits at an awkward intersection — push is a pure-affiliate-budget format that the trade press treats as a long-tail format, and native is a brand-budget format that the trade press treats as the consideration-funnel default. The honest comparison cuts across that frame. Affiliate-budget native (MGID, RevContent, the affiliate-network native panels) competes directly with push on the same buyer profile, and the buyer should know where each format actually clears.

Disclosure: bestadsnetwork.com participates in adsy.tech's affiliate programme. The format comparison below is unchanged by that fact — this isn't a ranking page, it's a hub page that names where each format fits.

How I compare formats

Six dimensions, weighted by what actually moves a campaign decision in 2026.

Cost structure. Push runs CPC primarily; native runs CPC and CPM. The distributions overlap at the affiliate-budget native tier and diverge at the brand-budget native tier.
Conversion characteristics. CTR, conversion rate, conversion-event quality. Push has the higher CTR; native has the higher conversion-quality on day-30 metrics.
Vertical fit. iGaming, sweepstakes, dating, finance, nutra, e-commerce, SaaS. Each format-vertical pair has a different economic profile.
GEO depth. Where the format clears at honest unit economics. Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3 — and the supply geometry differs by region and language.
Scale ceiling. How much budget the format can absorb before the auction stops calibrating.
Regulatory exposure. Push has GDPR opt-in compliance overhead; native has FTC/CMA disclosure-of-sponsored- content compliance overhead. Both are non-trivial in regulated markets.

Cost structure

Push runs CPC primarily. Tier-1 push CPCs sit at £0.04–£0.15 in 2026 depending on subscriber recency, GEO and vertical. Translated to CPM-equivalent at typical push CTRs of 2–6%, that's £2.50–£10 effective CPM. The subscriber-acquisition cost (£0.20–£1.50 per subscriber depending on GEO and lead-quality) sets the floor that push CPCs have to clear above.

Native pricing splits sharply between brand-budget and affiliate- budget tiers. Brand-budget native through Taboola and Teads- Outbrain (the Outbrain-Teads merger completed 2025, creating the consolidated Outbrain-Teads supply pool of ~$1.8B combined revenue) clears at £0.20–£0.80 CPC for Tier-1 inventory, with premium-publisher direct deals climbing higher. Affiliate-budget native through MGID, RevContent, Adsterra Native, PropellerAds Native and Mondiad Native clears at £0.10–£0.40 CPC for Tier-1 and £0.04–£0.15 for Tier-2.

At affiliate-budget tier the push and native CPC ranges overlap substantially. The honest comparison is at conversion-cost-per- acquisition, not at CPC. For an iGaming sportsbook FTD offer in Tier-2 LATAM, push typical CPA in 2026 sits at £8–£25; affiliate- budget native equivalent sits at £12–£40. Push wins on absolute cost; native wins on conversion quality (better day-30 retention, fewer chargebacks, higher LTV). The format choice depends on which side of that tradeoff matters more.

Conversion characteristics

Push converts on copy and timing. The format delivers headline, body, icon and CTA; conversion path is push → click → landing page → action. Format-shape favours offers where ad copy does work — finance lead-gen, e-commerce retargeting against a known SKU, mortgage rate-watch lead-gen, SaaS trial sign-ups with a clear pain-promise headline. The audience selection is opt-in- pre-qualified by subscriber-list, so the funnel is pre-warmed relative to cold prospecting.

Native converts on content-context and consideration. The format delivers in-feed sponsored content matched to the publisher's editorial style; the user clicks because the headline plus publisher context implies the content will be useful. Conversion path is native → in-content article (often a content-bridge landing page) → CTA → action. Native works particularly well for offers that benefit from a story or product-discovery flow — DTC e-commerce, SaaS trials with consideration-funnel landing pages, healthcare and pharma offers where the brand needs the in-content explanatory frame.

The conversion-quality story: native users have higher day-30 retention, higher LTV, and lower chargeback rates than push users on most direct-response offer types. The reason is the audience- selection mechanism — content-context selection produces a more considered audience than opt-in subscriber-list selection. Push wins on absolute conversion volume per pound of test spend; native wins on quality-of-conversion per converted user. For offers where day-30 retention matters more than day-0 cost (subscription, SaaS, regulated finance), native is the structurally better choice.

Vertical fit

iGaming and sportsbook: Push for retargeting, native for top-of-funnel brand discovery. Regulated Tier-1 (UK GC, Italy ADM) leans toward native for brand-budget reach; Tier-2 LATAM and SEA leans toward push for direct-response retargeting against affiliate-budget budgets.

Sweepstakes: Push, decisively. Native CPC economics don't clear on sweepstakes payouts at affiliate budgets.

Dating: Both, with push leading at affiliate budgets and native leading on higher-LTV dating brands at brand budgets. Push has the CTR advantage; native has the day-30 retention advantage.

Finance lead-gen (loans, insurance, credit cards): Native, decisively, at brand budget. The content-context and consideration-funnel fit matches CFPB and FCA regulators' frame of compliant lead-gen better than push does. Push works at affiliate-budget tier for rate-watch and pre-qualification offers.

Nutra and supplements: Both. Push for repeat- buyer retargeting; native for cold-prospecting through content-bridge landing pages. The content-bridge native flow that nutra affiliates have built on MGID and RevContent since 2018 is the format-vertical fit at its clearest.

SaaS trials: Native. The consideration-funnel fit and the content-context audience selection match SaaS decision-making better than push's pre-qualified-subscriber model. Affiliate-budget native through MGID and RevContent works at the productivity-tool and DTC-SaaS tier.

DTC e-commerce retargeting: Native. Push works on known-SKU retargeting, but native's content-context delivers higher conversion-quality on day-30 retention metrics that DTC attribution depends on.

Mortgage and real-estate lead-gen: Native at brand budget for the in-content compliance frame; push at affiliate budget for rate-change-triggered alerts.

Adult: Neither category is a strong fit. ExoClick and Clickadu serve adult-push at scale; affiliate-budget native mostly rejects adult creative.

Scale and GEO depth

Native scales higher in absolute impression terms — Taboola and Teads-Outbrain clear tens of billions of in-feed sponsored- content impressions a day across the open web. Push subscriber lists at the major networks collectively serve 1–2 billion subscribers, growing more slowly because subscriber-acquisition is structurally expensive. Native's GEO depth is wider in Tier-1 and Tier-2; native's Tier-3 supply is thin because long-tail Tier-3 publishers haven't been mapped into the content- recommendation supply at meaningful depth.

Push has the inverse profile — concentrated subscriber-list supply in Tier-1 and Tier-2, structurally thinner Tier-3 supply because subscriber-list construction never reached critical mass in markets like Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh at scale. For Tier-3 reach, the format-choice between push and native often comes down to whichever has thinner supply in your specific GEO — and the answer varies by country.

Scale ceiling at the £25k+/month budget tier: native at brand- budget level absorbs essentially any budget; native at affiliate- budget level often saturates at £20k+/month within two weeks at a single network. Push at the same budget often saturates the available subscriber list in a GEO+vertical pair within two weeks, then the advertiser has to widen GEO or wait for subscriber-list refresh.

Regulatory exposure

Push has GDPR opt-in compliance overhead. Every push subscriber must give consent before the network can deliver notifications; consent capture, storage, and revocation flows are a compliance layer the network carries. Networks with cleanest consent- management posture (PropellerAds, Adsterra) charge a premium that follows from running an opt-in business.

Native has FTC and CMA sponsored-content disclosure overhead. Every native impression must be labelled as sponsored — "Ad," "Sponsored," "Paid Partnership," "Promoted Stories" — under FTC endorsement guides and CMA influencer-marketing guidance. Taboola and Teads-Outbrain enforce this at the SSP level; affiliate-budget native panels enforce it less consistently, which is one of the structural risks of affiliate-budget native inventory.

For regulated verticals (mortgage, insurance, financial products under MiFID II, healthcare advertising under EU MDR) native at brand budget has the cleanest compliance pathway because the in-context placement and sponsored-content disclosure map onto the regulator's framework. Push has a workable but tighter compliance pathway through opt-in consent. Affiliate-budget native in regulated verticals carries higher compliance risk than brand-budget native — covered in the format-specific deep dives below.

Where each format wins — and where it loses

Push wins for

Sweepstakes, dating, iGaming Tier-2 retargeting
Rate-watch / alert-style lead-gen
Day-0 conversion volume at affiliate budget
E-commerce retargeting against known SKU
Repeat-buyer retargeting in nutra and DTC
Sub-£2k/month test budgets

Native wins for

SaaS trial sign-ups and consideration-funnel offers
Finance lead-gen (regulated, CFPB / FCA compliance)
DTC e-commerce cold-prospecting
Healthcare and pharma in-content compliance
Day-30 retention and LTV-driven attribution
Content-bridge nutra cold prospecting (MGID / RevContent)

Two anti-recommendations

Skip both formats if your offer requires impulse-conversion at sub-£10 CPA in Tier-2 popunder-friendly geographies.

Popunder beats both formats decisively on sweepstakes, dating Tier-2 acquisition, and impulse-iGaming in LATAM, MENA and SEA. Push and native both carry creative overhead and CPC floors that don't clear at popunder's sub-£10 CPA economics for impulse offers. The popunder-vs-push and popunder-vs- banner comparisons cover that side of the format family.

Skip native specifically if your test budget is under £2,000 and your conversion-funnel is single-page-direct-response.

Native CPC floors and the content-bridge landing-page workflow add structural cost that affiliate-budget direct- response can't always absorb. Push at sub-£2,000 test budget generally produces cleaner data than native at the same budget. Once the offer is validated and the conversion- funnel allows a content-bridge layer, scale up to native for day-30 retention.

Which networks run both formats well

Six networks in our 12-network coverage set run both push and native panels: PropellerAds, Adsterra, RichAds, HilltopAds, Mondiad and adsy.tech. The advantage of one-panel-two-formats is operational. The disadvantage is that brand-budget native sits outside the affiliate-network category — bought through Taboola, Teads-Outbrain or DSPs. 'Native' on an affiliate network is affiliate-budget native: lower CPC, lower-quality publisher mix, higher residual fraud surface than Taboola-or-Teads-Outbrain native.

Specialists: MGID and RevContent on content-bridge native for nutra and DTC; Mobidea on mobile-CPI where the format intersects mobile-affiliate workflow.

How I built this comparison

Parallel-buy testing. A collaborator and I ran the same iGaming sportsbook offer in Tier-2 LATAM and a DTC retargeting offer in Tier-1 UK across push and native on PropellerAds, Adsterra, RichAds, HilltopAds and adsy.tech between Q4 2024 and Q2 2026. Spend per format-network was £1,500 over fourteen days. Native was tested at affiliate- budget tier only.
Panel walkthroughs across six networks. Format surfacing in the campaign-create flow, sub-ID granularity for format-level reporting, S2S postback macro coverage.
Cross-reference with Taboola and Teads-Outbrain public benchmarks. Taboola Q4 2025 investor presentation and Outbrain-Teads merger close documentation.

FAQ

Push vs native — which has higher CPC in Tier-1 GEOs?: Native, materially. Tier-1 push CPCs sit at £0.04–£0.15 in 2026 depending on subscriber recency and GEO; Tier-1 native CPCs on Taboola and Outbrain (now Teads-Outbrain post-merger) sit at £0.20–£0.80, with the affiliate-budget native panels (MGID, RevContent, Adsterra Native, PropellerAds Native, Mondiad Native) clearing at £0.10–£0.40. The premium reflects the content-context value native delivers — the impression sits inside publisher editorial real estate rather than as a notification overlay.
Which converts better, push or native?: Native has the higher click-quality; push has the higher click-volume. Native CTRs sit at 0.15–0.6% across Taboola and Outbrain in 2026; push CTRs sit at 2–8% on fresh subscriber lists across PropellerAds, RichAds and Adsterra. Different conversion characteristics: native users have higher day-30 retention and higher LTV because the audience selection is content-context-driven; push users have higher day-0 conversion volume because the subscriber-list is opt-in-pre-qualified for the format. For long-LTV offers (subscription, SaaS, recurring iGaming), native wins; for impulse-and-direct-response, push wins.
Which is better for iGaming?: Push for direct-response acquisition and retargeting; native for regulated-market brand-discovery and high-value sportsbook brand. Push dominates Tier-1 iGaming retargeting against opted-in subscriber audiences; native dominates the brand-discovery layer in regulated markets (UK GC, Italy ADM) where the in-content placement carries the operator brand into consumer media at compliant creative quality. The honest mid-tier iGaming operator runs both — push for retargeting, native for top-of-funnel brand consideration.
Which format has more inventory in 2026?: Native, by impression volume — the Taboola-and-Teads-Outbrain ecosystem clears tens of billions of in-feed sponsored-content impressions a day across the open web. Push subscriber lists across the major networks (PropellerAds, RichAds, Adsterra, HilltopAds) collectively serve 1–2 billion subscribers. But the comparison is misleading because most native inventory is bought at brand-budget CPCs that affiliate budgets compete on only at the bottom of the auction; push inventory is competed almost entirely by affiliate budgets so the available-supply-at-affiliate-prices is closer than the raw numbers suggest.
How does cookie deprecation affect each format?: Native is more affected by attribution-window compression than by audience-identity loss — the content-context audience selection is publisher-mix-driven, not cookie-graph-driven, but the conversion-attribution post-click depends on cookies that the Privacy Sandbox cycle compromised. Push is more affected on the audience-acquisition side — opt-in subscriber-list construction has historically used cookie-graph data for lookalike modelling. Google's 22 July 2024 reversal on Chrome cookie deprecation reduced the urgency on both; it didn't reverse the directional pressure. Networks that built first-party-data clean rooms preserved more functionality.
Can I run both formats from the same network?: Yes, partially. PropellerAds, Adsterra, RichAds, HilltopAds, Mondiad and adsy.tech all run both push and native panels with shared sub-ID and postback infrastructure. The advantage is operational; the disadvantage is that the high-quality native inventory (Taboola, Teads-Outbrain) sits outside the affiliate-network category — bought through DSPs or directly. 'Native' on an affiliate network is a different product than 'native' through Taboola: same format-family, different audience-context, different price-band.
Which format is more fraud-prone?: Push has more historic fraud exposure on the subscriber-list side (purchased lists, stale opt-ins, double-opted-in-to-anything-that-moved subscribers); native has more on the click-fraud side (bot-driven click inflation against affiliate-budget content-recommendation panels). The 2025 affiliate-fraud baseline of ~9% applies to both. Networks with documented fraud-block disclosure are the honest comparison floor. Taboola and Teads-Outbrain have their own first-party verification layer; the affiliate-network native panels rely on the network's general fraud-block infrastructure.