Digital advertising has long struggled with a simple problem: people ignore ads. Banner blindness, low engagement, and declining click-through rates have forced brands to rethink how they connect with audiences online.
That blind-spot behaviour, where users scroll, skim, or ignore ads, doesn’t just frustrate marketers; it eats into budgets and undermines performance. For the founders of Naritive, that contrast between cost and attention sparked a bigger question: what if ads were built for engagement?
What started as a prototype in Johannesburg in early 2024 has since become a platform used by more than 100 brands and agencies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States.
The ad problem that inspired Naritive
Before Naritive existed, its founders, Rafiq Phillips and Nicolas Van Zyl, were entrenched in digital marketing.
While managing search marketing and digital campaigns for MTN South Africa, including overseeing SEO and Google Ads, Phillips encountered a recurring pain point that many marketers dread: standard display ads were underperforming. Conversations with agency partners revealed deeper issues surrounding engagement, creative fatigue, and an inability to capture audience attention meaningfully.
“I realised I could build something that solves this,” Phillips, Narrative’s CTO, recalls, drawing on his background in information technology and software development from Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
A few days of tinkering produced a prototype. Three months later, version 1.0 of the Naritive platform was live. Coincidentally, as he was preparing to quit MTN during a restructuring, Naritive secured private funding beyond the required threshold for participation in the Google Startups programme, an early validation and resource boost.
What Naritive actually does and how it works
At its core, Naritive is an ad tech platform that allows brands and agencies to create and deploy interactive, engaging ads on the open web (outside social platforms and within publishers’ sites) using tools like Google DV360 and other demand-side platforms (DSPs).
The platform has two flagship offerings: The Ad Stories and Ad Social. The Ad Stories offer interactive display ads that look and feel more like social stories or mini-experiences than static banners, while the Ad Social offers social-style interactive formats tailored for specific campaign goals.
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These formats extend beyond traditional display ads by enabling audiences to participate in polls and quizzes, scratch to reveal discounts or promotions, browse live e-commerce product feeds, add events to their calendars without leaving the page, and engage with different actionable elements inside a single ad unit.
Naritive also tracks detailed analytics on every interaction, offering brands deeper insights into how audiences engage with campaigns.
Brands that want an end-to-end solution can work with Naritive’s internal design and ad ops teams. The startup’s experts craft the creative, set up campaigns, and manage performance, essentially acting as an extension of the brand’s marketing team. However, this comes at a premium CPM tech fee.
For brands and agencies that want more control, Naritive offers a white-label version of its tech platform. Customers use the same tools to build and customise interactive ads, generate embed codes, launch campaigns on demand, and access click and interaction analytics.
This flexible SaaS option retains the platform’s core engagement benefits while allowing internal teams to self-serve.
Naritive has also begun testing a lead generation feature that lets users submit contact details directly inside an ad unit, routing that data straight into clients’ CRM systems, enhancing lead capture without interrupting the user experience.
The business model
Unlike many early-stage startups that diversify revenue with consulting or ancillary services, Naritive keeps its focus tightly on its core product: technology fees based on advertising spend.
Current pricing in South Africa stands at 40 rand ($2.5) CPM tech fee for SaaS clients and 120 – 140 rand ($7.5 – $8.7) CPM tech fee for managed service clients. These fees are charged on top of campaign budgets and remain Naritive’s sole revenue stream.
Since its official launch in 2024, Naritive has raised over $500,000 in funding and generated approximately $2.5 million in revenue. The adtech has also built a 30-man strong team, secured repeat business from brands and agencies, and expanded its global footprint across multiple continents.
“The fact that we have repeat business remains one of the strongest performance indicators. Because clients return with new campaigns; it shows we have satisfied users,” Phillips says.
What sets Naritive apart
Naritive’s competitive advantage lies in its engagement.
“Some of the unique features and functionality that we do have is not available in other forms of display advertising,” Phillips says.
The startup’s tech was independently verified by Lumen, a firm that analyses attention metrics using eye-tracking and other measurement tools. According to Naritive, this verification shows that the brand recall from Naritive ads was higher than that from standard display, and the click-through rates were above industry averages. Paid engagement also exceeded IAB benchmarks.
Moreover, the startup says its ads tend to lift performance across marketing channels, not just within campaigns themselves. Brands running Naritive ads reportedly see increases in direct traffic, search traffic, and engagement through other digital channels, suggesting that interactive ad formats may boost overall brand visibility.
Naritive sees its product as complementary to existing digital marketing, working alongside social, search, and other paid media rather than replacing them.
Built in South Africa, going global
While Naritive’s team — all South African — built the company’s software locally from Johannesburg, its sales division operates not just in South Africa and the rest of Africa, but also in the UK, helping the company sell its software globally.
Despite launching less than two years ago, Naritive’s reach spans multiple continents and industries, proving that African-built digital products can find traction on the international stage.
Looking ahead, the startup is expanding into new formats and capabilities, such as AI-powered tools and connected TV advertising. Naritive is also preparing to launch features that enable customers create ads for smart TVs, a move that would expand its platform beyond web ads into the growing world of connected TV.
Through the Google Startups programme, Naritive is building an AI roadmap that will enhance creative generation, campaign optimisation, and insights and ad performance analytics.
