It’s been a little over a year since the FTC published guidelines for native advertising. In just 12 months this has led to a significant shift in how native or sponsored content has been implemented. In our original analysis, MediaRadar discovered that in year 2015 75% of publishers hosted native campaigns without any mention of the content being advertising. With the FTC’s guidelines in place however, that number has dropped substantially. Over January we’ve re-run our analysis. Now just 5% of publishers fail to mark native content at all. This is a significant shift in accountability and transparency.

At the time the regulation was announced, some in the industry was concerned that such thorny legalese would dampen adoption of native advertising. But this has not been the case. At all. Here are some quick stats based upon our most recent analysis of native advertising:

• We have found monthly increases in the number of brands placing native, in almost every month. There are 16,000 native advertisers buying ads in the past year, up 73% from 2015.
• Programmatic native exchanges have become very good at amplifying native, placing 4,182 native advertisers in calendar year 2016. These are advertisers running on exchanges such as Triple Lift, Nativo, Bidtellect, and Giant Media.
• There have been very few fines over publishers or advertisers violating the guidelines. The FTC set the new guidelines and the industry has reacted and internalized the feedback.

It is true that there are still examples of native content that is not complaint with FCT guidelines. Folio covered this as recently as last week. But in the big picture, with our country focused on fake news, there is more emphasis on premium content, and premium transparency, than ever before.

Todd Krizelman (@ToddKrizelman ) is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.