Native advertising needs a boundary

Ji Ren
jr956710@ohio.edu


Speaking of "native advertising," I think I may count myself as one of its "victims."

I love shopping and trying out new things, but I do not want to spend even a dollar on useless stuff. So I always search and read people's reviews on products of the same kind online so that I can make a good decision before every purchase. I do enjoy this procedure very much.

However, sometimes when I open a web page, the article does not look like a normal review but more like something written officially, saying only good things about the product. To be honest, I have to say that I did not notice those alleged "reviews" are actually native advertising until I read the articles today. Like the article "Storytelling ads may be journalism's new peril" says, some native advertising is not labeled clearly enough. Readers may not find out it is an ad. This made me feel uncomfortable, since I might have probably bought something because of an appealing "review" without noticing it was a piece of native advertising.

Photo credit: northamerica.mslgroup.com

Our society becomes more and more competitive, and it gets much harder for companies to catch consumers' eyes and sell their product. Thus, they have to find more creative ways to show their products to the public.

Meanwhile, things happen in the area of journalism too. It becomes harder to make profit and make a living by publishing traditional articles. Online publishers and product companies depend on each other in order to expand their interests; an increasing number of native advertisements appear online. These paid posts surely increase the opportunities for the product to be known and purchased by the public, and the more people read the ads, the more profits online publishers can get from those companies.

We cannot deny this is a good method for public, the product companies and the news outlets. By doing this, good products are introduced to more people,  companies earn profits and online journalism makes money as well. Everyone benefits.

However, I personally find those native ads quite annoying. Like I said before, many of those ads talk only good things about one product. Being a consumer, I feel that ads or reviews like that lack sincerity, honesty and responsibility and are not worthy reading. Meanwhile, I'm also a journalist. From the perspective of this, like this article says, I do agree there must be a clear boundary for posting native advertising.

We have to make it clear that the public is always the one to trust and support us. It is a difficult thing to gain the public's trust and support when we do not care about and show our sincerity to them. As a journalist, we all know that we write for truth. It is important to write honestly in news stories but also native advertising.

Here, as a consumer and a journalist, I really hope that the next time when I read a "product review," I can feel sincerity, honesty and responsibility and easily find a clearly labeled sponsor. And if not, please read the editorial guidelines before the next review.