Why we can’t afford to screw up native advertising
Like it or not, native advertising is here to stay – so let’s learn to do it well, and in a way that serves the interests of publishers, journalists, advertisers and, above all else, readers and consumers. By Raymond Snoddy.
There is no longer any point arguing like theologians about what constitutes the essence of native advertising, or to what extent it is a new phenomenon or something as old as the hills.
It makes much more sense to accept that native, in its various forms, is simply a force that will increasingly be with us.
This is obviously true, because hard-pressed traditional publishers can no longer be overly sniffy about a potential new streams of revenue, and keep up the old barriers between editorial and advertising in their most rigid form.
As for the new online players, most of them don’t even have any such hang-ups in the first place and their formats seem to allow an easier, and more natural, mingling of commercial and editorial messages.
If native advertising is going to be increasingly with us in future then it makes sense to move on from squabbling over narrow doctrinal definitions.
The issue then becomes more about how to do it well and in a way that serves the interests and preoccupations of publishers, journalists, advertisers and – above all else – readers and consumers.
In particular many journalists worry, rightly, that there should be some distinguishing line between editorial and advertising – marking out who is selling what and to whom.
Earlier this month, Vibrant, a US company specialising in native advertising since 2001 – or whatever it was called then – brought together 16 publishers and advertising types to see whether a set of workable ground rules could be distilled out of a round-table discussion.
They ranged from Autotrader, Conde Nast and Dennis to The Guardian, IPC and Reed Business Information.
The basic rules make sense but where does native fit with muck-raking, awkward, scurrilous, investigative journalism? Native surely won’t want to be associated with highly controversial stories.”
It’s probably crazy, and even misguided, to try to draw up any specific set of rules in a restrictive way to inform the decisions of so many different kinds of publishers, each with their varying sensibilities. Yet rather surprisingly, across a mere 90 minutes of conversation a consensus did emerge, together with a number of broad approaches.
The words themselves are almost embarrassingly trite although important ideas, and guidelines, lie behind them.
For native advertising to be effective, and more importantly acceptable, it must be done with integrity, transparency, proportionality, relevancy and appropriate placement.
Integrity, as Hattie Brett, editor of The Debrief sees it, means that you have to work with “like-minded partners who share our brand values and understand that we know how to talk to our readers.”
Or to put it a little more bluntly: piss off your readers at your peril.
The example of Atlantic magazine from all the way back in 2013 is still fresh in the memory. It carried what was essentially a puff piece, or native ad, for the Scientologists. The magazine’s readers were outraged and the piece had to be taken down within hours. You could also argue that in this context integrity means you don’t accept any old tat just because there’s a cheque involved.
Such arguments lead straight into transparency and the unavoidable tensions that inevitably will arise.
If native advertising, or content, is at heart trying to pass itself off as editorial in disguise, then the more transparent you are and the more signposts you erect, the less well the trick might work.
Most of the publishers agreed that native advertising should be clearly marked in a way that is obvious and understandable to readers. Microscopic text at the bottom of the page, or a narrow blue rule around the copy doesn’t count.
As Rob Smallwood, head of investment at Guardian News and Media put it; if you aren’t overt and you aren’t transparent “you will get negative user feedback.”
There was a minority view that if you work really closely and well with sympathetic advertisers who understand your publication and its readers, then overt signposting would not be necessary because nothing would be done to upset.
Relevance is almost too obvious to dwell on. Native advertising, like almost any advertising, is only likely to have much impact if it is relevant and interesting to those on the receiving end.
According to Malcolm Attwells, programmatic sales director and acting trading director at Conde Nast, native advertising needs to be relevant “within the context of the content.”
The issue of proportionality is a little more tricky. How much native advertising is too much? It is pointless to draw up precise percentages, but native should not be seen to dominate in any way. Say more five per cent rather than 50 per cent. Native should only be a helping financial hand and if it is too noticeable the game is up.
As Steve Payne, head of planning, insight and research at AOL argues, if publishers get the proportion of native advertising wrong “it can have a devastating impact on their relationship with their readers.”
Appropriate placement is also a pre-condition for success. ‘Appropriate’, according to Justin Taylor, digital managing director of MEC, can mean bite-size native ads for mobile that are closely integrated within content, with greater depth provided for tablets.
The basic rules make sense but where does native fit with muck-raking, awkward, scurrilous, investigative journalism? Native surely won’t want to be associated with highly controversial stories.
Probably not, but that hardly represents a change. The publishers are optimistic that they can continue to accommodate hard-hitting stories and native advertising and content as they have in the past.
It’s not a case of one or the other.
It was not mentioned at the round-table, but some basic rules will also be needed to protect journalists – particularly in the regional press – if they were to stand up against native advertising that lacked integrity, transparency, proportionality, relevancy and appropriate placement.
If 2014 is the year of native advertising, then by next year the debate will largely be over. If things go well, and publishers behave sensibly, native will have been seamlessly integrated as one of the possible streams of revenue that publishers can dip into.
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