The Three L's of Sponsored Content

Bianca Hillier
bh792112@ohio.edu

With the increasing popularity of websites like BuzzFeed and YouTube, where citizen journalism regularly turns into sponsored content, the question arises: is sponsored content ethical? The answer comes down to the three L's: Labeling, Logical, and Legal.

Throughout this blog, I will prove my points with examples from two BuzzFeed articles. The first one is about the recent shooting at the Canadian Parliament Buildings. This is a news article that is not sponsored content. The second article, to which I will compare the first, is about the 10 stages of running out of toilet paper. This article is sponsored content from Charmin, a leader in the toilet paper market.

Labeling

Sponsored content is ethical if, and only if, it is clearly labeled as such. This is necessary because it immediately lets the reader or viewer know that the article is, in effect, an advertisement. People who work for the company and therefore want the company to succeed have either created or financially contributed to content that puts their product in the best light. For some people, seeing the "sponsored content" or "promoted" label will weaken the credibility and effectiveness of the article. However, for others, the fact that the company was upfront and honest about labeling the content as sponsored makes them respect the company. Many of the people with the latter viewpoint tend to see the content more as entertainment from there on out. This sponsored entertainment content model is what BuzzFeed has taken control of in today's media space.

In the example below from the BuzzFeed article linked to in the previous paragraph, the article is labeled twice and the very top of the page. This clear labeling shows to the reader that Charmin is an honest company, and BuzzFeed is an honest publication.

Photo from BuzzFeed.

Logical

Another reason why sponsored content has become so popular in the past few years is because it is a major source of revenue. It is possible that the Editors of BuzzFeed do not want their publication to become known for its entertaining sponsored content; however, they understand and are forced to accept that this is their major revenue source, therefore posting more and more sponsored content on their site because it is the logical thing to do if they want to grow their business. Sponsored content also gets more views than traditional news articles on sites like BuzzFeed, as evident in the photos below.

These are the reactions to the toilet paper sponsored content article. Photo from BuzzFeed.



These are the reactions from the Canada shooting article, a news article. Photo form BuzzFeed.

As you can see,  there are more reactions to the sponsored content article. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe more people viewed the sponsored content than the news article, hence the sponsored content brought in more money for BuzzFeed.

Legal

Many journalistic practices are considered unethical is because they are simply immoral, however some are considered unethical because they are actually illegal. Neither of these are the case for sponsored content. Sponsored content is completely legal, and, if correctly labeled and/or used for logical reasons, completely ethical.