How to Build a Native Rich Media Carousel Ad Using the NAG

Advertisers can build rich media creatives using Sharethrough’s Native Ad Generator (NAG) to run programmatically on DSPs. There are two types of Carousel units that can be created:

• Full Carousel (Thumbnail and Headline/Description will rotate)
• Thumbnail Carousel (Only Thumbnail will rotate)

Specs for these ads are the same as Native Display units. You can find the full specs below:

1) To create these ads, you will need to use the NAG specific to the DSP you will be using to trafficking within. Here are some quick-access links to the most common NAGs:

Adobe

Amobee

Xandr

Centro

Dataxu

DV360

The Trade Desk

StackAdapt

MediaMath

 If you don’t have an account yet, click Sign Up in the top right. This will allow you to build and save creatives, which can be accessed across all the DSP Native Ad Generators.

2) Click the “Create Native Ad” button.

3) Select the ad type you’re seeking to run.

4) Create your ad unit. Make sure you include all of the required fields and any 1x1 trackers here.

Enter brand name

Enter ad name This is used for your internal tracking and organizational purposes.

Enter headlines: 90 characters max

Enter descriptions: 140 characters max

Upload Image Files

Append your 1x1 click tracker in the Click-through URL field

• For the Full Ad Carousel, a different click-tracker can be appended to each slide. For the Thumbnail Carousel, only one click-tracker can be appended across the unit.

Append your 1x1 impression tracker in the Impression tracker field

5) After saving, click the “Generate pixel” button. This will provide you with a 1x1 that will be entered into the DSP in order to call the ad from the NAG.

6) Build out a dummy native display creative within the DSP. You will need to fill out all required fields within the DSP, but nothing you enter into the DSP will actually serve thanks to what you do in step 7.

7) Place the 1x1 pixel in the 1x1 impression tracking field within the DSP. The way this is labeled will depend on the DSP, but they all serve the same function: To serve the asset that you built out in the NAG rather than the dummy asset. Every time an impression is served, it will trigger the workaround to swap the NAG ad you created in place of the dummy asset.

Finally, Javascript tags cannot be entered within the Native Ad Generator, so these require an additional workaround. If you'd like to use JS tag tracking on these ads, please visit this page about implementing a JS tag while using an NAG workaround.