The Ethical Obligations tied to Native Advertisements

Native advertising has become one of the most popular techniques used by public relations professionals and marketers. According to Adjust.com, "Native Advertising is paid media designed to match the content of a media source." Native ads are shown to be more aesthetically pleasing to readers because of the way they are adapted to the branding of the publication. However, due to their seamless alignment on a website or in a print ad, the audience can easily be deceived. As you can see below, Buzzfeed uses native advertising to promote various products on their website, and it looks very similar to their other, regularly published content. To that point, if you don't look closely, you would have no idea which is an advertisement and which is just a regular news article. 

A sample of of Native Advertising on Buzzfeed.
Photo from mgb2b.com

While Native Advertising has become a game changer for the ad industry as a whole, it is important for readers and publishers to be aware of the ethical obligations that are linked to native advertising. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued guidelines for native ads in 2015, stating that the more similar that the advertisement looks in font and formatting to the publisher's regular content, the more likely it is that a disclosure is needed. These guidelines help ensure that readers know when they are looking at paid advertisement's, further reassuring them that they can trust the media they are reading. 

However, despite the FTC's guidelines, it will be impossible for them to monitor every website utilizing native advertisements. That is why it is important for public relations professionals, marketers, and publisher's to hold themselves accountable for maintaining these disclosures on advertisements. While the technique of native ads does show to bring in more profit, with statistics even showing an 18% increase in purchase intent, it is crucial to the journalism and media industry to continue to earn public trust in a time where 'fake news' is our kryptonite. 

The easiest way to maintain and further build public trust is to include those disclosure's, and provide transparency to reader's when using native advertisements. If the professionals behind the advertisements don't follow these guidelines, readers may be more inclined to call out publisher's and brands for deception. This would only further tarnish the reputation and sales of those brands, as well as hurt public trust for those media outlets.