native advertising

The importance of native advertising continues to rise in the revenue mix even as labeling is inconsistent for many media companies, according to a report released today by the International […]

There’s a situation that has been trending for some time that we need to be concerned about — ads masquerading as genuine media-generated stories. On the home pages of legitimate news sources — The Washington Post, The New York Times and other publications — are articles that may not immediately be recognized as advertiser-driven content.

Forecast: Native will account more than half of all display spending, with growth of more than 36% in 2017. Behind the growth: Mobile-friendliness and programmatic buys.

Offering its first estimate of the size of the native advertising market, eMarketer said U.S. native digital display ad spend will grow 36.2% this year to reach $22.09 billion. At that level it will make up 52.9% of all display ad spending in the U.S.

Only a third of advertisers renew their campaigns, finds a new study, and more than a third of publishers aren’t following FTC guidelines on labeling, deceiving readers.

Yes, it’s now hugely popular, but as an ad form it has major drawbacks, and they will prove its undoing in the coming year. Here are two: Poor reader engagement and low return on investment.

Turns out readers are more inclined to skip past it if they know It’s really advertising, which may be why so many publishers flout FTC disclosure guidelines. This bodes ill for its future.

The Associated Press is putting together a digital ad agency for its subscribers with sponsored content that can run against its own content inventory. It’s a move to help shore up its customer base, which has been slowly dropping AP subscriptions. AP will be working with Nativo on the back end, and the organization describes the effort as “not so much an ad agency shop as a photography and video shop.”

Some forms of advertising look so much like news, you might not even notice the difference. That’s why RTDNA’s board of directors this month unanimously voted to adopt and to publish new guidelines on what has come to be called “native advertising.”

The cable programmer, whose channels include TBS, TNT, CNN and Cartoon Network, among others, is introducing a new native advertising unit at the Consumer Electronics Show this week with the goal of reimagining commercial breaks.

Consumers have difficulty distinguishing between native advertising and editorial content, according to a new study by researchers at Grady College in Georgia, published in the December issue of the Journal of Advertising.

Sensing imminent regulation of native advertising, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is asking the Federal Trade Commission to proceed with caution. Threatening the future of native ads, the agency said it believed that online ads can be deceptive when they are formatted to closely resemble news stories or other editorial content.

The Federal Trade Commission’s new rules lay out for the first time how advertisers and publishers should deploy and label native ads.

With all the hype in recent years around social media, online video, mobile marketing, messaging services and so-called “native advertising,” one would be forgiven for thinking that search advertising — the workhorse of digital advertising — had fallen by the wayside. It hasn’t.

Viewers who tuned in to the 10 o’clock news on WSBK Boston Thursday night may have seen the future of local broadcasting. The question is whether they knew what they were watching. Near the end of the telecast, the station aired an interview with Jeff Raider, founder of Harry’s, the online razor retailer. The segment ran during what is normally a commercial break but resembled journalism, with an interviewer posing questions to a business leader. In fact, the piece was something in between — not quite journalism yet not exactly advertising.

With more magazine publishers adopting native advertising, the American Society of Magazine Editors has revised its editorial guidelines to reflect the new reality — acknowledging that native ads are here to stay, while highlighting the basic ethical boundaries editors still need to observe.

In order to work, native ads must be contextually relevant to surrounding content. By creating ads that make sense alongside content — and thus, add value to the reader — advertisers can drive higher engagement and avoid annoying their audience.

Maybe it’s just a new iteration on the advertorials newspapers and magazines have run for decades. Maybe it’s a scurrilous devaluation of journalism. Either way, it’s here, and at the highest levels of the business.

As with many a burgeoning trend in the media business that grows quietly before bursting onto the scene, content marketing finally may have arrived in the wider world’s consciousness. Bill Momary looks at the advertising genre, which includes the popular term native ads, that has been growing steadily inside and outside of traditional media.

NBC News, which was an early adopter of “native” formats — ads that are disguised to look like editorial content — online, is bringing them to TV. In what it claims is an industry first, NBCUniversal will produce 30-second pieces of content for Xerox that will air on its broadcast and cable TV news and sports channels.

For newspapers, TV, radio and other local media companies focused on creating content for SMBs, success depends on the actual execution and tracking of a content plan. In the final part of a three-part CrowdCheck, Local Market Launch’s Gideon Rubin describes how SMBs and the publishing agencies that represent them can effectively plan, staff, execute and profitably scale their content production strategies. Read parts one and two here.

The workshop, called “Blurred Lines: Advertising or Content,” focused on whether publishers and advertisers are doing enough to keep consumers from mistaking native ads — which are meant to closely resemble non-sponsored content — from the content itself. While the ad industry mounted a vigorous defense, detractors blasted the practice