In this 8 minute interview with Rebecca Lieb, analyst at Altimeter Group where she covers digital advertising and media, an area that encompasses brands, publishers, agencies, and technology vendors we talk about Web Professional Trends for 2014 including Native Advertising Trends and:
* How Native Advertising, is a form of converged media (Content and Paid advertising)
* What this means for new types of marketing and new ways to reach audiences
* How the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is weigh in in to set best practices
* How the FTC sets the stage Web publishers
* How the NY Times launches a manifesto regarding what Native means to that publication
* How this affects promoted post and advertorial
* How drops in efficacy in banner ads is affecting marketers (consumers aren’t clicking)
* How Web publishers are looking for new sources of revenue
* What this means for branding on the web
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More on Native Advertising
More on the FTC Rules
The McClatchy Washington D.C. office is reporting that readers may assume that. But changes in the media and the way people get their news drove the federal agency Wednesday to weigh the issue of disclosure about Internet stories that look like real news stories. The workshop’s title said it all: “Blurred Lines: Advertising or Content”?
Responsible for policing deceptive business practices, the agency’s leaders are concerned that technology, innovation and the rapid spread of social media as platforms for information sharing are turning traditional advertising on its head.
What concerns the agency is “native advertising,” designed to look and feel to a reader like a news article or the content of a website.
“Native advertising is taking a lot of different shapes and forms online,” Mary K. Engle, the FTC’s associate director of the advertising practices division, told McClatchy.
When newspapers commanded the advertising dollars, the FTC policed for deceptive ads. In fact, three of the first five cases after the FTC’s creation in 1914 involved newspaper advertising. In recent decades, “advertorials” that looked like newspaper articles were the rage, and the FTC monitored them to ensure that readers knew the difference.
In the digital age, newer players such as Mashable and The Huffington Post command huge numbers of page views and are pushing the envelope for online ads.
The FTC is trying to determine whether specific rules or guidance are needed for online advertising. Wednesday’s daylong public meeting was designed to hear from all sides of the issue: online publishers, middlemen and advertisers.
“It’s a learning experience for us, and the question is do consumers understand what is happening?” asked Engle, whose agency gave guidance for providers of paid search-engine results in 2002 and again this year, when lines began blurring again.
The result of the hearing might be a more exhaustive study of the industry.
“I think we haven’t decided that yet,” Engle said.
One key issue is transparency, to ensure that consumers can distinguish whether an article on a social media site is original content or some form of paid advertisement.
“There is clearly benefit to having some consistent principles on how we do this,” said Todd R. Haskell, the senior vice president for digital media at Hearst Magazines, part of the Hearst Corp. and the publisher of 20 U.S. magazines that range from Cosmopolitan to Country Living.