Native advertising

Native advertising is a type of advertising, usually online but feasibly elsewhere, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform. Due to its ambiguous delineation from some other forms of marketing, the precise period of inception for native advertising is still debated. This uncertainty is particularly notable in certain instances of embedded marketing, of which modern native advertising can be seen as an evolution. Where instead of embedded marketing's technique of placing the product within the content, in native marketing, the product and content are effectively merged into one entity. Because of this merger of advertising and content, the legal status of native advertising is uncertain, and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop to better elucidate its contours in 2013.

The latest research has shown that native advertising is thought to appeal mostly to those constituting the Millennial generation, though a voluble number of consumers and critics within this demographic seem to view these advertising techniques as annoying instead of useful. However, Patrick Quigley, CEO of advertising technology firm Vantage Media, blames this aversion on the tendency of people to recall the days of the in-your-face advertorial (a paid placement attempting to look like an article), and that "if the content is useful and presents something your audience didn't know before, they're likely to trust it and refer back."

Forms

Despite the ambiguity surrounding native advertising's invention, many experts do consider the Hallmark Hall of Fame, a series which first aired in 1951 and still runs today, as among the earliest instances of the technique. According to Lin Grensing-Pophal, "The award-winning series is arguably one of the earliest examples of 'native' advertising—advertising that is secondary to the message being delivered, but impactful through its association with valued content."

Contemporary formats for native advertising now include promoted videos, images, articles, commentary, music, and other various forms of media. A majority of these methods for delivering the native strategy have been relegated to an online presence, where it is most commonly employed as publisher-produced brand content, a similar concept to the traditional advertorial. Alternative examples of modern technique include search advertising, when ads appear alongside search results that qualify as native to the search experience. Popular examples include, Twitter's promoted Tweets, Facebook's promoted stories, and Tumblr's promoted posts. The most traditionally influenced form of native marketing manifests as the placement of sponsor-funded content alongside editorial content, or showing "other content you might be interested in" which is sponsored by a marketer alongside editorial recommendations.

Most recently, controversy has arisen as to whether Content marketing is a form of native marketing, or if they are inherently separate ideologies and styles; with native market strategists claiming that they utilize content marketing techniques, and some content market strategists claiming to not be a form of native marketing.

Advertising Disclosure

As it is the nature of native units to blend with their surrounding, a clear disclosure was deemed necessary when employing native market strategy in order to protect the consumer from being deceived, and to assist audiences in distinguishing between sponsored and regular content. According to Federal Trade Commission, means of disclosure include visual cues, labels, and other techniques. The most common practices of these are recognizable by understated labels, such as “Advertisement”, “Ad”, “Promoted”, “Sponsored”, “Featured Partner”, or “Suggested Post” in subtitles, corners, or the bottoms of ads. A widespread tendency in such measures is to mention the brand name of the sponsor, as in “Promoted by [brand]”, “Sponsored by [brand]”, or “Presented by [brand]”. These can vary drastically due to the publisher's choice of disclosure language (i.e. wording used to identify native advertising unit).

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) released updated guidelines in 2015 reaffirming the need of publishers to distinguish editorial and advertising content. The ASME approach recommends both labels to disclose commercial sponsorship and in-content visual evidence to help the user distinguish native advertising from editorial.

A study published by University of California researchers found that even labeled native advertising deceived about a quarter of survey research subjects. In the study, 27% of respondents thought that journalists or editors wrote an advertorial for diet pills, despite the presence of the "Sponsored Content" label. Because the Federal Trade Commission can bring cases concerning practices that mislead a substantial minority of consumers, the authors conclude that many native advertising campaigns are probably deceptive under federal law. The authors also explain two theories of why native advertising is deceptive. First, schema theory suggests that advertorials mislead by causing consumers not to trigger their innate skepticism to advertising. Second, advertorials also cause source-based misleadingness problems by imbuing advertising material with the authority normally assigned to editorial content.

Categories of Online Ads

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the primary organization responsible for developing ad industry standards and conducting business research, published a report in 2013 detailing six different categories for differentiating types of native advertisements.

1. In-Feed Ad Units: As the name denotes, In-Feed ads are units located within the website’s normal content feed, meaning they appear as if the content may have been written by or in partnership with the publisher’s team to match the surrounding stories. A category that rose to popularity through sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed's sponsored articles due to its effectiveness, In-Feed has also been the source of controversy for native marketing, as it is here the distinction between native and content marketing is typically asserted.
2. Search Ads: Appearing in the list of search results, these are generally found above the organic search results or in favorable position, having been sold to advertisers with a guarantee for optimal placement on the search engine page. They usually posses an identical appearance as other results on the page with the exception of disclosure aspects.
3. Recommendation Widgets: Although these ads are part of the content of the site, these do not tend to appear in like manner to the content of the editorial feed. Typically delivered through a widget, recommendation ads are generally recognizable by words which imply external reference, suggestions, and tangentially related topics. "You might also like"; "You might like"; “Elsewhere from around the web"; "From around the web"; "You may have missed", or "Recommended for you" typically characterize these units.
4. Promoted Listings: Usually featured on websites that are not content based, such as e-commerce sites, promoted listings are presented in identical fashion with the products or services offered on the given site. Similarly justified as search ads, sponsored products are considered native to the experience in much the same way as search ads.
5. In-Ad (IAB Standard): An In-Ad fits in a standard IAB container found outside the feed, containing "...contextually relevant content within the ad, links to an offsite page, has been sold with a guaranteed placement, and is measured on brand metrics such as interaction and brand lift."
6. Custom / Can't be Contained: This category is left for the odd ends and ads that do not conform to any of the other content categories.

Digital Platforms

Native advertising platforms are classified into two categories, commonly referred to as "open" and "closed" platforms, but hybrid options are also utilized with some frequency.

Closed platforms are formats created by brands for the purpose of promoting their own content intrinsically on their websites. Advertisements seen on these platforms will not be seen on others, as these ad types are generated for its sole use, and structured around exhibiting ad units within the confines of the website's specific agendas. Namely, advertisements distributed on closed platforms originate from the platform's brand itself. Popular examples include Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Sponsored Stories on Facebook, and TrueView Video Ads on YouTube.

Open platforms are defined by the promotion of the same piece of branded content across multiple platforms ubiquitously, but through some variation of native ad formats. Unlike closed platforms, the content itself lives outside any given website that it appears on, and is usually distributed across multiple sites by a third party company, meaning that the advertisements appearing on open platforms namely are placed there by an advertiser.

Hybrid platforms allow the content publishing platforms to install a private marketplace where advertisers have the option to bid on the inventory of ad space either through direct sales or programmatic auction through what is known as Real-Time Bidding (RTB). Therefore, advertisements distributed on hybrid platforms are placed there by the platform itself, the space having been sold to an open platform advertiser.

Industry Map Description

Native ad platforms consists of the following: Exchanges, In-Feed, App Integration, and Branded Video.

1. Exchanges: These technologies provide the mediums which connect advertisers with publishers, allowing the programmatic sales of ad space typically seen in open and hybrid platforms. Exchanges enable matching of supply and demand, and provide reporting tools to assist advertisers and publishers in understanding the metrics and end results of their partnerships. These either work with advertisers directly, or are integrated into the process with a Demand-Side Platform (DSP).
2. In-Feed Platforms: An In-Feed platform specializes in placing native advertisements into the news feed of specific websites, often achieved through programmatic communication to multiple sites at once. The process begins with a brand creating the content on its own, such as American Airlines with a sponsored video, and bringing it to an In-Feed service such as Connatix (an In-Feed company listed on the Lumascape) which would in turn place said sponsored video content in the feed of The Guardian or Twitter. However, these ads will only appear in the feed, and not on any other ad spaces within the sites. This technique is used for the attention which In-Feed content receives, advertisement or not, as many brands see a higher conversion rate from them as compared to other, more traditional ad units.
3. App Integration: As In-Feed companies promote branded content solely In-Feed, App Integration platforms work solely within apps. Through these platforms, advertisers are provided with mobile service integration through exposure in- app, their advertisements appearing at multiple points within use, while the exposure is enhanced via mobile commerce options such as in-app purchases and subscriptions. For example, Zumobi ( an App Integration platform listed on the Lumascape) would take an ad and place it in the feed of the Facebook app, but not on the desktop site or even the mobile site.
4. Branded Video: Although it can manifest as a straightforward, traditional commercial placed in-feed, most Branded Video platforms will take the form of a seemingly informative or entertaining video exhibited in native form. These platforms produce the videos themselves, as opposed to other platforms who only distribute them, and place the ads in appropriate sites. For example Touchstorm (a branded video platform listed on Lumascape) could create an informational video for Bank of America, and place it in a native unit at MSN.com. Platforms who perform this function are less common however, as they allow the brand less control over the content, and are more expensive operations to run.

See also

• Branded Content
• Contextual advertising
• Content marketing
• Embedded marketing
• Listicle

External links

• Oliver, John, Native Advertising, Last Week Tonight, 3 August 2014
• Khan, Fahad, "Toward (Re) Defining Native Advertising", Huffington Post, 3 September 2013.
• Joel, Mitch (13 February 2013). "We Need a Better Definition of "Native Advertising"". Harvard Business Review Blog. 
• Salmon, Felix, "The disruptive potential of native advertising", Reuters blogpost, 9 April 2013.
• Rice, Andrew, Does BuzzFeed know the secret?, New York Magazine, 7 April 2013