The changes in today’s advertising landscape are dramatic. That’s why we must diligently create new words and new frames for our words, because old words and old frames are inadequate vessels for bold new frontiers like “Native Advertising.”
What the hell is Native Advertising? Is it David Kennedy’s work for American Indian College Fund?
No, I don’t think it is.
Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, wrote an article for Ad Age describing the format.
Native ads place brand content such as videos, photos and articles directly into the fabric of a publisher’s site — usually in a form that matches the site content — instead of just fitting ads in boxes separated from and around the content.
Sounds like advertorial to me, or one piece of the content marketing pie.
Greenberg says high-profile examples of native advertising include Facebook Sponsored Stories; Twitter’s Promoted Tweets; promoted videos on YouTube, Tumblr and Forbes; promoted articles like Gawker’s Sponsored Posts and BuzzFeed’s Featured Partner content; Sponsored Listings on Yelp; promoted images on Cheezburger; and promoted playlists on Spotify and Rdio.
It’s also a topic we picked up during last night’s recording of The BeanCast. At the 11-minute point of Bob Knorpp’s 213th program, I ask why we need another label for content marketing.
There was also discussion of the line between church and state in media companies. I argue that the division is archaic, and that media execs have more to worry about today than brands encroaching on their sacred news space. Media’s role is to deliver high quality information to an audience and brands have a role in that, and in the best cases brands advance their own cause along with their media partner’s.
