Though controversial, native advertising is one of the fastest-growing fads in media. The format of the advertisements mimics editorial pieces Native advertising has accounted for a small portion of most advertising budgets; however, 63 percent of ANA members who were surveyed said that they would increase their native advertising budget for the upcoming year.
Disclosing native ads to consumers has proved to be problematic. Labels such as “presented by”, “paid post”, and “sponsored content” seem like they would get the idea across; however, studies have shown that people who read native ads are often unable to distinguish native ads from editorials. This raises questions about the ethics of advertising in this fashion.
Native ad tech company TripleLift studies the ramifications of native advertising, with interesting results. They used Sticky, a company specializing in eye-tracking software and surveys, to gather the following data. A group of 209 people were shown the same advertisement under different disclosure labels. Seventy-one percent of the users noticed the content of an ad, but sixty-two percent of those had no idea that they were looking at an ad. Ads which were labeled “advertisement” were seen the least, because people tend to ignore ads.
TripleLift also determined that advertisers and readers alike prefer softer terms to straightforward ones. Advertisers tend to lean toward terms like “promoted by” and “presented by”. Readers prefer terms like “brought to you by” and “sponsored by”, and dislike the terms “advertisement” and “promoted by”. The softer terms lend a touch of humanity to the ad, as opposed to the more direct terms which feel colder.
Though the terms “presented by” and “promoted by” have been in use for a long time, they are still the most potentially confusing to readers.
Confusion is a problem for advertisers and consumers alike. More than half of readers surveyed by Contently last year didn’t trust sponsored content. Two-thirds felt conned once they realized that content was actually a sponsored advertisement. Advertisers want their brand recognized without scaring people away. Two-thirds of ANA members agree that clear disclosure of native ads is necessary; however, they don’t agree on what defines “clear” or even who should do the labeling.
Publishers and readers agree that terms like “advertisement” and “paid content” provide the most clarity, even though neither party actually likes those terms.
TripleLift senior marketing director Michael Goldberg says that the industry needs to settle on a universal disclosure method. “At the same time, the language that is used should not immediately scare them away,” he said. “Most native content, when done right, offers relevant information that is not directly selling. So finding that right balance in labeling the ad will benefit the publisher, advertiser and the consumer.”
Contently editor-in-chief Joe Lazauskas said, “Short of labeling them ‘advertisement,’ native ads can be made clearer by having the disclosure within the text where they’re less likely to be missed by the reader, making the headlines and labels a different color, and labeling it ‘sponsor content.’ If people can’t identify native ads as sponsored content, then what the hell is the point of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to run these things on publishers’ sites?” Lazauskas continued. “Why not just publish good content on your own site and then pay a fraction of that cost to promote that content on paid social and Outbrain? It’s way more efficient, and everyone will know it’s from you.”
