Written by Elena Arkhangelskaya and Pontus Tjernberg
When clicking around on some newspapers' websites in search for some interesting readings, you might find some good ones and spend some minutes of your valuable time in your stressed multitasking life. But do you use your critical glasses or take it at face value? Is it an article written by a newspaper? Or is it an article that looks like it’s written by a newspaper, but is actually written by a company? Or is written by… You grasp the logic. Today it can be really hard to know if it’s an advertorial, editorial or native advertisement.
A native marketing boom has been going the last years and Business insider announces that the spending on native ads will continue to grow rapidly over the next coming years.
Image source: http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5452dc3aecad04bf55ccd04a-960/nativeadvertisingrevenueus.png
But what is really the difference between all of those marketing buzzwords? Jessica Stevens at copypress.com is trying to break down the different words and to point out the main differences. She means that the concept with advertorials has been around for a while and you can find it on different platforms, for example a television talk-show that is about making muffins with a special machine that is absolutely incredible. That is an advertorial and a company has paid money for them to show their product and talk about it. The reason behind it is that the company who paid for it, doesn’t want it to be so obvious that it is an advertisement.
Image source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xAjse6SV4GQ/hqdefault.jpg
Native advertisement is definitely a sibling to the advertorial, Jessica describes it like advertorials needed a facelift because for a lot of people it started to get obvious that what they were reading and looking at was pure commercials. The native ads are created “smarter” and have the same interface as the rest of the newspapers for example. The more similar it is a real article; the better is the native ad. But it’s still a bought space in the paper and some copywriter ordered by a firm often writes the article.
Image source: http://hostagencyreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/sponsored-articles.jpg
Image source: https://www.truthinadvertising.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/buzzfeed-native-ad.png
So what is then an editorial? A copy writer firm called Grey Gosling explains that it is a non-paid content that is accepted by the publication and needs to be about a subject that is interesting, brings clarity to the subject and in a non-promotional manner. Readers expect editorial articles to be impartial. Often only mention your company once or twice.
Grey Gosling describes that the case with all of the different techniques is to create well-written valuable content for the reader so they hold up for a minute and spend some of their time to read the article and in the best case scenario take everything at face value and to increase the brand awareness for the companies.
Can this really be legal? To produce content with a commercial purpose and make it look like it isn’t? David Rodnitzky writes in his article “Is Native Advertising Legal? Does It Matter?” about the controversial situation. He talks about that in different countries they have departments trying to regulate the issue. He declares that is a grey zone and the government departments struggle to regulate the market and the marketers always find a way in the grey zone or around it. Some interesting questions we ask ourselves. What happens for example if you pay a journalist or blogger all his or her flight tickets, hotel, dinner and so on to come to a press release of a brand’s new collection? With the intuition that they will write about the products or do an article about the company. The journalist or blogger post it at their website and it doesn’t say it’s sponsored content or that the company stands behind the article. Then it is presented as an editorial written by themselves, and you can’t see if it’s a “real” article or not. Then it’s getting complicated. It may be some type of a bribe or in some way illegal. But it’s no secret that bloggers get free samples and so on. I see those types of blogposts and articles everyday and in many cases I’m 100% sure that this guy is not honestly interested in this brand. In a big perspective I think this is dangerous for the journalism profession to produce unbiased content. But for companies and marketing directors the whole native world is fantastic. When you can create content with a strong credibility. That type of content sells!
Grey Gosling describes that the case with all of the different techniques is to create well-written valuable content for the reader so they hold up for a minute and spend some of their time to read the article and in the best case scenario take everything at face value and to increase the brand awareness for the companies.
Can this really be legal? To produce content with a commercial purpose and make it look like it isn’t? David Rodnitzky writes in his article “Is Native Advertising Legal? Does It Matter?” about the controversial situation. He talks about that in different countries they have departments trying to regulate the issue. He declares that is a grey zone and the government departments struggle to regulate the market and the marketers always find a way in the grey zone or around it. Some interesting questions we ask ourselves. What happens for example if you pay a journalist or blogger all his or her flight tickets, hotel, dinner and so on to come to a press release of a brand’s new collection? With the intuition that they will write about the products or do an article about the company. The journalist or blogger post it at their website and it doesn’t say it’s sponsored content or that the company stands behind the article. Then it is presented as an editorial written by themselves, and you can’t see if it’s a “real” article or not. Then it’s getting complicated. It may be some type of a bribe or in some way illegal. But it’s no secret that bloggers get free samples and so on. I see those types of blogposts and articles everyday and in many cases I’m 100% sure that this guy is not honestly interested in this brand. In a big perspective I think this is dangerous for the journalism profession to produce unbiased content. But for companies and marketing directors the whole native world is fantastic. When you can create content with a strong credibility. That type of content sells!
#Nativemarketing #advertorial #editorial #whatiswhat #contentisking
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