Reading the trade press and attending industry conferences, you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone but you is making their living off native advertising. The buzz has been a constant hum for months, punctuated by some big announcements, from BuzzFeed’s near billion-dollar valuation this summer to the NY Times crediting a 16% bump in ad revenue to their native efforts. Just this week the ANA reported 63% of their members plan to increase their budget for native advertising in 2015.

But as dramatic as those successes are, native advertising is still far from ubiquitous: Based on our findings at MediaRadar, fewer than 15% of ad-supported sites are even selling native ads today. Penetration by product category too is light. For example, even among technology brands, 8 out of 10 have yet to take the native plunge. The Food category shows one of the highest native adoption rates, but is still just 15% of the total food advertisers.

Still, we agree with Colbert’s premise: if the rapid adoption of native formats floods the market with inventory, prices will crash, just as they did with banners. The law of supply and demand will persist, even with native. In their rush to get on the native bandwagon, will publishers choose “more” or “better”? As we study the market, we’re seeing some of each.

Buzzfeed makes the listicle look easy and it works great for them, but it’s not right for everyone, and in the wrong context it will be as superfluous as another banner.

In our research, we’ve come across some cause for optimism, however. Many publishers have recognized the native format as something special, and have given us some great role models. As more advertisers begin to explore opportunities with native advertising, we encourage them to look to some of the early innovators as inspiration. The NY Times & United Airlines effort was as effective as some of the non-sponsored NYT editorial — readers chose to view it more than 200,000 times. SB Nation’s compelling video content and subtle branding for Nike delivered the ad message without sacrificing editorial standards. And Slate & Wells Fargo kept comfortably within the Slate voice with their long-form article.

We’ll be watching carefully to see which road the others take – here’s hoping it’s the one with high CPM’s for all.

While the debate about native advertising continues unabated – whether or not poorly labeled native advertising is misleading to consumers – our data reveals that marketers are increasingly interested in sponsoring editorial content on digital publishers. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s recent $50 million investment in BuzzFeed reinforces this emerging trend in advertising.

Between June and July 2014, we looked across a sample of 100 sites and found more than 1,040 different brands placing native ads. What is exciting is that the brands running native ad programs are from a very wide range of advertising categories.

To demonstrate the wide scope of native advertising, these were the top 10 categories of advertisers utilizing native in our index of consumer and b-to-b websites.

1. Technology
2. Media & Entertainment
3. Industry
4. Travel & Leisure
5. Professional Services
6. Financial & Real Estate
7. Retail/wholesale
8. Automotive
9. Food
10. Apparel & Accessories

We’re constantly monitoring what is happening in the industry as marketers and advertisers continue to adopt native advertising, so check back here soon for further research and commentary.

Of course, AOL is a consumer publisher and consumer brands have been faster to embrace programmatic ad buying than other markets. However, a meaningful number of Fortune 1000 companies are B2B brands, and they are certainly using programmatic technology to buy advertising. There are innovative new tools like Demandbase that specifically help B2B advertisers target people and brands at B2B firms in their business segment.

While programmatic B2B trails consumer placement, it does exist and we are seeing it increase sharply. Between July 2013 and July 2014, the number of brands placing ads programmatically on networks on B2B websites jumped 20%.

After all, there are several benefits to programmatic advertising: it allows for data-driven targeting, scale and rapid time-to-market, and is cost efficient.

A thoughtful article on programmatic recently was posted by Bill Guild in “The Make Good” titled, “How Programmatic Media-Buying Tackles B2B Marketers’ Top Five Prospecting Issues.”

The takeaway? There is an opportunity for B2B publishers to increase revenue by adopting programmatic advertising early.

This year, however, scented ads have made a comeback. MediaRadar’s fragrance advertising research for Ad Age revealed a 10% increase in scented ads during the first six months of 2014. This report, which looked across 177 consumer magazines, found 296 total scented ads that amounted to 629 total ad pages for fragrance brands between January and June 2014.

“The best way to have women buy fragrance is to have them smell it,” said Donna Kalajian Lagani, senior VP-publisher of Cosmopolitan, the magazine that ran the most scented ad pages. This quote from Lagani illustrates the enduring value of print advertising. With publishing shifting online and digital advertising following, print advertising continues to offer a unique way for consumers to engage with ads.

Check out the full Ad Age report here and on AdAge.com.

This is an interesting change in strategy for Apple. In recent years, Apple has placed premium ad pages (back-cover and inside front-cover) in nationally circulated consumer magazines to show off their latest products. When the iPhone 5C was released last fall it was supported with TV and outdoor ads, but the magazine campaign in the U.S. did not start until February 2014.

In February and March 2014, there have been 27 ad pages for the iPhone 5C, as measured among 178 national consumer magazines. By comparison, the campaign for the iPhone 5S, which began in October 2013, has had 47 ad pages to date among the same magazines.

While magazines continue to be a significant advertising platform for Apple, the recent campaigns have been much smaller than the extensive advertising push for the iPhone 4S, which featured 167 ad pages between October 2011 and August 2012.

Perhaps this new magazine campaign can help improve Q2 sales figures for the iPhone 5C, but will it be enough to change the conversation about this product that began back when it was first released?