Native advertising is big business, and it’s only going to grow. By billions and billions.

A recent study from BI Intelligence projects spending on native ads to reach $7.9 billion this year and grow to $21 billion in 2018.

In late 2013, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released its “Native Advertising Playbook,” aimed at serving as a “consistent framework” for for the discussion surrounding native advertising, which is constantly evolving.

At that time, native ad spending was only at $4.7, so that’s how much it’s on the rise. If your’e going to spend on it, you obviously need to think about how to make it effective. An infographic from Sharethrough and Column Five (via MarketingProfs) aims to help you in that department by taking a look at the science behind it.

Last month, the IAB released a “deep-dive” on in-feed ad units as a supplement to the playbook.

“In-feed ad unit adoption is growing across publisher sites with different ad unit types introduced and/or retired quickly,” said the IAB’s Susan Borst. “In addition, feed types are also evolving beyond the three main types (content, social and product), to mixed feed types that have variable aesthetics/content which don’t fall clearly into one bucket. But even with these changes over time, it is important that one thing remain the same and that is the need to evaluate the in-feed ads from the consumer perspective to ensure that they remain native, meaning that they are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.”

They have a helpful infographic on this as well, which you can see here.

Image via Sharethrough and Column Five