The Natives Are Getting Restless About Native Advertising - Steve Blacker

Native advertising has been around for a very long time. Magazines long ago started offering special issues, advertorials, custom publishing, etc. as ways for an advertiser to be associated with relevant editorial. Time Inc. in the 80's created a custom publication titled Home Office that was totally sponsored by IBM.

Mike Drexler, one of the most creative media executives I know, suggested to several major publications that they allow several of his major advertisers the opportunity to sponsor a single issue. The only difference between Native Advertising today and what was previously done was that in the past sponsorship was clearly identified as advertising. And if the advertiser got to write their own PR copy in an advertorial, readers knew that the content came from the advertiser's PR department because it looked different and was in a section marked as advertising.

What has not changed, though, is in order for advertising to be effective the web site, magazine or whatever medium is used must have trust and credibility. Once any ad medium loses those two attributes its influence is significantly lessened and so is the credibility of the advertising it carries. When advertising is disguised as editorial content and initially fools someone it's a short term gain. Eventually the reader or viewer will find out they've been tricked and they will no longer trust the advertiser or the medium.

That's just a basic truism.

Three major factors impact native advertising that tries to fool. 1) Consumers are wary of receiving fraudulent E-mails containing offers that they know are too good to be true. 2) Trust is the strongest attribute any brand can have.3) No one likes to be lied to or misled.

Imagine a restaurant owner writing his own restaurant review and pretending he was a restaurant reviewer. Or a major movie producer being quoted in an ad about how good his movie is disguised as a film critic.

Who would believe or trust such a review? When an advertiser produces their own editorial content and it is not clearly and prominently identified as advertising what results is nothing more than a scam. And when consumers realize they have been tricked the backlash will lead to an erosion of trust for both the medium and the advertiser.

Short term, native advertising may work and greatly improve click rates, etc. Long term it is a disaster waiting to happen.

If an advertiser wants his message to be surrounded by content that is relevant to his ad there are many other options.

Steve's most recent book You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-Inventing Yourself and Your Career chronicles his 50 year career working for over 25 different companies with 189 lessons learned and insider tips from Gayle King, Cathie Black, Chuck Townsend and 28 others; Blacker is still going strong today as a partner in Frankfurt & Blacker Solutions, LLC. His web site is blacker-reinventions.com and e-mail address is blackersolutions@aol.com

Read all Steve’s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Media Reinventions.

Check us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggers.com
Follow our Twitter updates @MediaBizBlogger

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggers.com management or associated bloggers. MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries.