In recent years, native advertising has been gaining in popularity. According to Sharethrough:
“Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Form — Native ads match the visual design of the experience they live within, and look and feel like natural content. PLUS!! Function — Native ads must behave consistently with the native user experience, and function just like natural content.
Despite the popularity of native advertising, it is a controversial practice. In this post, we are highlighting two videos and two infographics on the subject.
Here’s the view of Jake Ludington (who is experienced in product development, Web development, and producing and distributing videos):
“The New York Times Web site redesign has drawn some complaints because it added native advertising to its site offerings. The two primary arguments against native advertising is that it will potentially compromise editorial integrity or that it isn’t a good long term strategy. Both arguments are largely put forward by working journalists. I don’t see either being a problem.”
In Seriously Simple Marketing’s view:
“Native advertising has risen recently and marketers are divided about its use online — some like its creativity and some find it deceiving. Done right, native advertising is a good way to boost your online presence and deliver valuable and relevant content to your audience. So, what makes a good native ad? Here are examples of native advertising done right and examples of native advertising gone bad.”
“Advertisers go native in the search for consumer engagement. It’s a simple premise. If you want to engage online consumers, give them more of what they go online for in the first place. Advertisers are doing just that by shifting to paid content that’s similar in nature to and displayed in the same format as the editorial content surrounding it. The idea is to get consumers to click on and then share these ‘native ads’ with others.”
Sharethrough, a native advertising specialist, notes that:
“The largest social networks – from Facebook to Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr – have developed their business model around native, in-feed ads. The publishing industry is quickly following suit, as companies such as Time Inc., Forbes, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today, continue to introduce new advertising integrations on desktop and mobile that match both the form and function of their editorial feeds.”
I am a supporter of native advertising as a consumer or an audience. I read native ad almost every day on some social media, because it is interesting. One of my favorite bloggers usually publishes two articles on Wechat every day. The first one is always about fashion. The second one is always native advertising. The blogger will mark the second article as native ad to let all audiences know we are going to read an advertising article. Some fans even like to read the native ad first than the fashion article, because the blogger always writes something interesting and audiences are curious about what kinds of product the blogger will introduce. The blogger used to work in a big newspaper company in China. Now she is the most successful blogger I have ever known. There are many famous brands in different industries are the sponsor of this blogger, including Gucci, Samsung, Longines and Volkswagen. BTW, the blogger named “16PO”.
As for me I really like reading native ads because it is very interesting and attractive. I often update the Instagram to look ChiaraFerragni ‘s OOTD. She is a very beautiful Italian girl and lives in LA, she updates her Instagram everyday to show the newest bags, shoes or clothes of so different famous brands. I like her looks.
I believe that native advertising is extremely misleading to the consumer. Your average person reads newspapers or online articles from news sources and trusts them. Personally I don’t trust many news sources because they all are biased in some way (some worse than others) and often take money to run certain stories, similar to native advertising. The LA Times recently published an article (1) about Tesla Motors and how they were a bad company for taking such large subsidies from the US government. The whole article painted Tesla Motors and the CEO Elon Musk in a bad light. Recently reports came forward that the LA Times was paid to run this story by people close to the Oil and Fossil Fuel industries. Although it is not native advertising, it runs along the same lines. It is content that was paid for by a third party and my be completely biased on certain subjects. But the consumer may not realize that what they are reading or viewing is not a publication of the news outlet, but a paid advertisement.
In other places, like when you do a Google search, native advertising shows up at the top of the list as a “sponsored” search. These kinds of advertisements are fine with me because they explicitly state that they are sponsored. This way even users who are unaware of what native advertising is can realize that those links are ads and not actual search results.
PS, in the article I sourced, they bash Tesla Motors for taking the subsidies that the US Government and individual states offered for electric vehicles. So why didn’t already established car companies like Toyota, GM, Ford, Honda, etc. do the same thing that Tesla did and take advantage of the subsidies?
Sources:
(1) http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html#page=1