Recommended for you? Don’t bet on it: the ‘native’ ad invasion

Tim Burrowes

June 17, 2014 1:07

US academic Patrick Howe argues that native advertising could be a costly misstep for publishers in an article first published on The Conversation.

From its very name to its sober headlines and public affairs-minded stories, the Christian Science Monitor’s website seems hand built to communicate credibility.

So what, a visitor might wonder, is up with those “other” stories on the site, such as the one with a picture of a shirtless Sylvester Stallone that asks: “Who knew these male mega stars were so small?”

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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1 COMMENTS

Good Moron 17 Jun 14

Robert Preston from the BBC quoted in The Guardian on 6 June:

“Native ads” is a terrible Orwellian Newspeak phrase for ads that look like impartial editorial. They could be articles written by a commercial company, or features written about a commercial company by the journalists of a news organisation but sponsored by that company. Or they may be videos either sponsored by a business or produced by the business. Of course each of these will say something like “sponsored content” at the top of the page. But it is very easy to miss this signposting when the article simply pops up in the middle of a run of stories on a website. As a reader, you have to be on your guard to distinguish the native ads from the proper journalism. And many of us may well be in too much of a rush most of the time when online to notice the distinction. Which is, I fear, pernicious.

My concern is that native ads seem to work, in a commercial sense. Take, for example, the new business news online service, Quartz. Much of its editorial is high quality. But what really excites advertising execs and investors is the way that it is able to charge a premium for its native ads, which are – depending on your point of view – either very cleverly or very sinisterly seamlessly integrated into its news service. Yes the native ads are always marked. But as a reader you have to enter the website alert to their existence to be swiftly conscious that they are importantly different from the other articles on the site.

Does that matter, if the native ads provide the resources for Quartz also to produce high-quality proper journalism? Well I fear it might, because over time the impression may be created that all editorial is for sale, and none of it to be trusted.

http://www.theguardian.com/med.....-full-text

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