Just because I’m in the marketing and advertising world doesn’t mean I like everything that goes on.
Take native advertising, for example.
According to the Huffington Post, native advertising is “sponsored content, which is relevant to the consumer experience, which is not interruptive, and which looks and feels similar to its editorial environment”.
Here’s an example of native advertising on Buzzfeed (see red boxes and arrows for emphasis):
There’s nothing wrong with native advertising like this as long as the ads/content are clearly marked using different colours and/or say “presented by” or “sponsored by”.
It is a problem, however, when these ads are not clearly marked.
If a user clicks on a native ad thinking its regular content, it’s not advertising, it’s trickery.
There will always be a need to separate content from advertising, or you will simply erode the trust readers and consumers will have towards media (what little is left of it).
But here’s the rub.
In as much as we don’t trust the media, the media and brands shouldn’t trust us either.
Why?
Because when it comes to digital, we don’t pay.
We’ll pay to invest in a Yo app or to fund potato salad, but we won’t download your WordPress plugin unless it’s free.
We’ll pay $5 for a Starbucks coffee, but we’ll download your new album, movie, or TV show illegally.
We’ll download your company’s free eBook (that probably cost a lot of time and money to make and will help solve our problems), but we’ll use a fake email address.
And as a friend pointed out on Twitter last week, we’ll pay for some things (like Netflix), but not other things (like real journalism).
The point is that we as consumers cannot complain about being tricked with things like native advertising when we do a lot of the trickery ourselves.
At the end of the day, people and businesses need to get paid for things that are of value.
The problem with digital is that it’s not tangible, it’s not something that you can hold in your hands but rather is stored on your computer, phone, or up in the cloud.
But until we learn how to value digital goods, lets not complain (too much) when we get tricked a bit too often with things like native advertising.