Native ads need disclosure: Why tricking users into clicking won't work
I recently wrote a post about native and advertorial and how the two mediums are entwined. This was the case in the early days of print and TV and is still relevant in today’s burgeoning native advertising landscape.
There has always been a trade off between free content and ad funded content. From the first soaps paid for by P&G to X-Factor sponsored by TalkTalk, these are the commercial facts of producing content that is not paid for by the unique offering of the BBC in the UK.
Native advertising is something relatively new in 2014 in the UK but something that has been growing at exponential rates in the US since 2010. A clear issue that has been highlighted many times with native and many many other forms of advertising is disclosure.
It is one of the key tenets of advertising that a consumer knows that it is in fact advertising that they are consuming and not standard editorial content. Whether that be a print advertorial highlighting that it is an advertising placement, Google changing the background colour on its paid listings, or display ads showing that they are dropping cookies to gather data to profile and retarget, disclosure is key.
The easy option when it comes to native from those that are scared and don't understand it is to say that it is simply duping users into clicking and interacting with advertising. This is not the case for a truly native product.
Disclosure is key and that is why all native offerings that I know of (including our own) and those offered by social networks are CLEARLY labelled as sponsored or promoted.
A good definition of native adverts is that they are contextually relevant posts that combine paid, owned and earned media into a clearly labelled branded message that is user initiated. Note the key phrase there: clearly labelled.
No switched on offering can prosper by tricking users into clicking and disclosure and transparency are key and a must for any platform, network or brand wanting to establish itself as a native product. Brands don’t want it, publishers don’t want, so why should any native advertising business want it either?
Brands should also want their content to be clearly labelled as they should be proud of the content they are producing. Native advertising relies on content to succeed and differentiate it from other forms of online advertising. Brands need to think about the content they are creating. The more they do that, the better, more often than not, the results. As Will Kirkpatrick says of Red Bull: "You get a very real sense that these guys are helping dream all this crazy stuff up and make it happen." Are all brands thinking the same?
Paul Hayes, the managing director of News UK Commercial warned recently that native advertisers shouldn’t ‘treat the customer like a moron’. He was talking largely about native advertising and some of the issues that can come up. No one wants to be duped, especially not by an online advert.
This is where disclosure plays an important and vital part in native advertising. The customer wants to consume and interact with the native advert, knowing that it is an ad and created by a brand. That’s the power of content marketing and native advertising.
Simply sticking with the status quo of ineffective display, poor creative and native bashing is not the answer. Harnessing a new (or reborn) medium – native advertising in its myriad different forms – clearly labelling that content as promoted and being creative in the content that you produce and distribute are keys to winning audience.
Native advertising is here to stay and it is rightly being championed by the likes of Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, who believes that content and native advertising are a way for companies (and I would say publishers as well) to challenge Google and the dominance of search online.
Native paves the way for brands to be bold and proud of the content they create – and truly become publishers of quality, engaging and transparent content that wins them engagement, loyalty and market share.
Francis Turner is managing director of Adyoulike UK