Native Ads

[Sirazam Manira]

Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform.

Product placement (embedded marketing) is a precursor to native advertising. Instead of embedded marketing's technique of placing the product within the content, in native marketing the product and content are merged.

An important aspect of advertising in general is net impression, which is a reasonable consumer's understanding of an ad. The power within native advertising, however, is to inhibit a consumers' ad recognition by blending the ad into the native content of the platform, making many consumers unaware they are looking at an ad to begin with. The sponsored content on social media, like any other type of native advertising, can be difficult to be properly identified by the Federal Trade Commission because of the rather ambiguous nature. Native advertising frequently bypasses this net impression standard, which makes them problematic.