People are watching an enormous amount of vertical video, and the monetization opportunity is just as big. By Owl & Co's estimate, vertical video advertising outside China is on track to generate around $131 billion in 2026. {[data-attribute="init-tooltip"][tooltip-content="<p>Source:<br><br>By Owl & Co's estimate in The Vertical Economy Report, vertical video advertising is on track to generate around $131 billion in 2026. This data excludes China.</p>"]} Today, the vast majority of it sits with a few platforms like Meta, ByteDance, and YouTube. But there is more room beyond them than most assume, and the demand is following: native video, which includes vertical video, is one of the fastest-growing creative formats at Moloco, with Moloco Ads spend up more than 100% from July 2025 to July 2026. {[data-attribute="init-tooltip"][tooltip-content="<p>Source:<br><br>Native video ad spend on the Moloco platform, measured July 2025 to July 2026, based on Moloco internal platform data.</p>"]} That growth is advertiser demand, and publishers building vertical experiences have exactly what it is looking for.
How publishers are making the most of vertical video
Based on our observations, publishers are already making the shift. As users, especially younger ones, move toward social-style video, many are rebuilding their apps around scrollable, video-first content instead of static articles and updates. The clearest example is the rise of micro-drama apps, built entirely around short, swipeable, vertical episodes, but the same shift is happening inside news, social, and entertainment apps that were never video-first to begin with. The next opportunity is monetization. Even as users convert to vertical content, much of the video inventory publishers can actually sell, especially outside gaming, is still landscape. Drop a landscape ad into a portrait feed and it shows up boxed in by black bars, asking the viewer to turn their phone.
Vertical video ads are the fix: full-screen video built for portrait, usually delivered as a native ad, so the publisher can make sure it looks and behaves in the right way within their apps.
How NewsBreak monetized its content without sacrificing user experience
NewsBreak is a U.S. local news platform with over 40 million monthly users. The team wanted to grow ad revenue but knew standard formats were not the answer. Banner ads would interrupt the video experience their users came for.
So they started running reel-style ads through the Moloco SDK, a native format that sits inside the feed instead of stopping it. The result was incremental daily revenue that had not existed before, without compromising the experience.
"The Moloco SDK allowed us to integrate reel-style ads which fit our product perfectly. The revenue uplift is meaningful and our users' experience isn't compromised."
-[Name], [Title] at NewsBreak
Getting vertical video placements right
The best placements sit at a break the user was already going to hit. In social and entertainment apps, that is between swipes in a full-screen feed. In messaging apps, it is the end of a call or the ad watched in exchange for credits to keep chatting. In news, it is app open or the beat before an article loads. In entertainment and sports, it is an interstitial-style ad at a break the content already has.
When you have placement right, the other half is delivering the right ad to the right person, and that is what turns it into revenue. For Moloco Ads, that runs on CARA (Compound Ad Recommendation Architecture), Moloco's AI system that orchestrates more than 30 models, agents, and specialized software to deliver performance outcomes on the open Internet. It connects Signals, Bidding, and Creative so each sharpens the others in real time, across a network of more than 2.9 million apps. For vertical, that means the Creative domain is choosing and tailoring the ad to the person seeing it, and for every impression CARA estimates the value of the opportunity and bids only when the economics work. For a publisher, that is the difference between filling a vertical slot and filling it well.
Match the format, place it well, serve the right ad, and it stops looking like advertising and starts looking like part of the feed.
