Weā€™ve previously discussed the best tactics in promoting native ads for affiliates. When advertising affiliate offers, you don't need to promote the brand for awareness. You just need to make the ad creative enticing enough to warrant people to click and view your landing page, where all the convincing is done. The ad and landing page must still be in sync, though.

The image that goes with the creative has a lot of impact on the ad. This means finding the right image is crucial. Before starting your search for images, you need to know what kind of image would not only catch the attention of your audience but also encourage them to click on your ad. Knowing your audience is important.

But where do you find images for your native ad?

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Paid Sources of Images for Native Ads


The great thing about paid sources is that they have a huge selection of images to choose from for your native ads. A lot of photographers and graphic designers upload their photos in such platforms because they can earn there. It is, therefore, a no-brainer that if you want great images to perfectly match your ads, you will surely be able to find them in a paid site. Here are your top options:

1. ShutterStock

There are a lot of awesome images on ShutterStock. Aside from stock photos, there are also some crazy edited ones that go with your crazy ad creatives.

One awesome feature of ShutterStock is that every image has a boatload of tags that describe it, which makes it easier for a person to find an image that fits his needs. This is one of the most popular paid image sources so they have a huge suite of photos to choose from for whatever keyword you can think of.

2. Adobe Stock Photos

Adobe is another great source. The advantage of this resource is that you can seamlessly integrate it with Photoshop CC or Illustrator CC, which is useful if you edit your images.

3. iStockPhoto

iStock is a paid image source that has a lot of exclusive images. If you canā€™t find what you are looking for in the previous two, you can search here. This also means the image that youā€™ll be using will be less widely used.

Free Sources of Images for Native Ads


If you donā€™t want to pay for photos at this stage, you can always opt for free images. Some require attribution; others donā€™t. The following are great sources, although make sure to read the license terms of the images first before using them.

1. Pixabay

Pixabay is one of the most popular free sources. They donā€™t have as big a collection as paid ones, but there are a ton of vectors and edited images here. Also, the quality is not the same across the board, but there are really good ones if you have the patience to search.

2. Pexels

Most of Pexels images are stock photos with awesome landscapes and great creative shots. Here, you can check how many times the photo has been downloaded before, so if you want to steer clear of images that have been used so many times, choose one with a low download count.

3. Flickr

If you are looking for candid images of people in real-life situations, then Flickr is a great resource. Most of the images are on Attribution 2.0, which means you can use the image even for commercial purposes, as long as you give credit to the owner/uploader of the image.

4. Google Images

You can always search in Google Images for anything you can think of. Google is very useful in finding amateur-looking images, which sometimes work better than stock photos, depending on your offer. You can simply use the Usage Rights filter to search for images that are labeled for reuse with modification.

The problem with using free image sources is that a lot of people use them for their websites and ads, so chances are itā€™s not the first time your audience will be seeing the image you are using.

Images are critical to native ad campaigns!


The image accompanying your ad has a lot of impact on your adā€™s performance. However, make sure to test various ad combinations to find out which produces results. No matter how confident you are with your choice of photo, what really matters is the outcome. Keep in mind that click-through rate is not the only metric you should be looking into, but also the conversion rate and ROI.

šŸš€ Looking for native ads traffic? Check out our list of awesome native ad traffic sources!