Native advertising has been hotly debated as companies have disagreed on how much labeling and differentiation should be given to make this type of advertising stand out. Research has shown that over 70% users want to learn about a company or event through content (according to MandLoys). It can be argued that most advertising incents consumers to ignore it and the only way to engage them is to give them unavoidable exposure (such as mid-roll ads on a digital video). Consumers rarely click on ads and try to consume content while ignoring ads that surround it.
Native ads present a solution to this problem as the intention is to provide meaningful and useful content to the consumer that helps inform them on the sponsoring company. These ads take a lot more effort and scale is difficult to accomplish. However, if a user reads through a native ad, it is difficult to think of anything more effective to engage someone in your company.
At the American Magazine Media Conference, there was a debate on the format of native advertising and how it should be labeled. Last week the American Society of Magazine Editors decided that native ads should not use the same graphics or font as other content on a page. However, the debate here was that native advertising shouldn't motivate consumers to ignore their content. Others argue that native ads should blend in with other content with them still knowing that it comes from an advertiser. The difference is that these types of ads have editorial insight and should have useful information that is related to other content from the website where it is posted. This is why many argue that it should blend in.
It will be very interesting to see the future of native ads and whether it will become a new normal for digital advertising and whether it will always stick out like a sore thumb on websites or blend in as other content.
Related article: http://adage.com/article/media/publishers-native-ads-editorial/244904/
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