For native ads, we get to control layout which is good as some ad network banners are not strictly fitting in typical 320x50 which lead to cut off ugly UI.
As for revenue, now very few ad networks are cpm. Most are cpi. So I am not sure if native ads out perform banners.
I believe ad network must first ask advertiser to create CPM, CPC campaign before they can in turn provide income to us as publisher. But for some ad network they are only offering strictly CPI to advertiser so in turn they cannot give us publisher income if we want CPM, CPC models. CPI would require advertiser to provide bigger budget which translate to higher income to ad network and us publishers. To us publisher, we know it is very hard to get users to do install so CPM, CPC is a more better option for us. So there lies the gap, advertisers prefer CPI nowadays. And so the search goes on.
Nowadays I am also “forced” by circumstances to go for CPI for my apps also. Income is definitely not as good as last time anymore. It could be zero for 1 week and then viola that specific day you get a few installs and you hope that install income can help cover the previous 7 days that is zero. So while waiting for install, you want other ad network which offer cpm to help cover those days that got no installs.
Ok back to topic. Native ad for me is CPI model so it is hard to compare with banner revenue which is CPM. Although I get many impression, revenue is zero if user don’t click on the native ad followed by install. So unless I can find a CPM model for native ad, then I can do a correct comparison with banner.
As for visually appeal, native ad is definitely much better than banner. We control the layout so it render nice and beautiful to user. This indirectly attract the user to look at the native ad one more time and get their attention. For me I am slowly moving towards native ad but I still keep the banner as not all ad network support native ad format yet.
I actually did the opposite test - replaced my native ads with 300X250 banners. I wanted to see if performs better, especially in tier 3-4 countries. We use FAN and Google (and others) for native ads, so we used them for 300X250 banners as well.