Ads become more and more difficult to separate from content. This because marketers have come up with methods, that make ads look like something other than ads, according to David Rodnitzky. Rodnitzky describes “transference” which is a physiological concept that explains why we transfer positive associations from a celebrity who promotes a product to the product itself. Do we transfer these positive feelings because we really think that the celebrities actually use the products that they promote? Probably not, is Rodnitzky’s answer to the question, but still the celebrity-used ads work.
The reason why the companies try to achieve ads that don't look like ads is that the power of the ad decreases when consumers discover that it is nothing else than an ad. To make advertising more effective and to keep the power of the ad, companies use some methods to create ads that look like editorial content. Rodnitzky describes some of these methods as native advertising, sponsored editorial content, influencer marketing, adwords and social media advertising in his article. What these methods have in common is that they in different ways fool the potential customer and the way they are thinking about the ad. When an ad looks like native content, some customers will perceive the ad as real content and not paid advertising. Influencer marketing, when a person gets paid to promote products on various social media, becomes more common. Influencers are perceived as more authentic than celebrities and therefore can customers more easily relate to influencers than celebrities. This personal connection makes the transference in this case even stronger, according to Rodnitzky. On social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, it can be difficult to distinguish between ads and content for the user, even if they have symbols that separate ads from content, they are difficult to distinguish.
Due to the difficulties for users to separate between ads and content, some guidelines have appeared. For example do influencers today need to inform their followers about that the companies compensate them when promoting their products. This indicates that it is an ongoing fight between companies, which want to advertise their products as content instead of ads, and the regulation that want to protect the customers by setting up different guidelines that the companies need to follow. We think that it is important that the regulators takes the fight against the companies because it is important that the customer are aware of what is content and what is advertising, so he or she can take a stand based on fact. However, it will be difficult for the regulators to act in the speed of the companies’ developing methods. Companies need to continuously change their methods to keep the power of the ads, before the customers become aware of the new methods.
