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FTC Issues New Rules for Native Advertising on the Internet (blockadblock.com)
popo writes: Native Advertising, or advertorial content that's camouflaged to mimic a site's original content is all the rage among web publishers these days particularly as ad-blocking takes a bigger and bigger bite out of traditional web-advertising revenues. Well the FTC reiterated its position on native ads and may have just slammed the door shut on this "alternative" form of online advertising. The verdict: If it's not clearly marked "advertising", it may be considered misleading. And by misleading, the FTC means illegal. Of course, from an adblocking perspective, once you clearly indicate something is an ad — you make it all the more easy to block. Which defeats one of the primary goals of native ads to begin with.
I guess this won't bar product placement though. What distinguishes between "placement" and "native ads" anyway? Placement has gotten pretty ridiculous in some media. You know, I used to enjoy the Tonight Show monologue, right up through Leno. Come to think of it, even Leno did placements with his "products that shouldn't merge" routine; but at least it was funny. Sort of. Now I play a game with the Tonight Show and some of the other late night shows. When the first product placement appears, I turn the TV off and go to bed. Very often I fail to make it through the entire monologue.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I work in the advertising industry. Despite all the buzz around them and the dumb marketing nonsense, "native" ads had abysmal click-through rate, engagement, and literally negative brand metric. Turns out, users really really dislike being tricked into thinking an ad is actual page content, and brands are starting to get results back that show this. High end clients have specifically eliminated native advertisement from their purchased inventory.
The rules still need to be in place for the crap-tier networks, but chances are those are going to be based in eastern europe anyway and thus not subject to FTC rules at all.
I know how it should be: regulator should force every commercial media/service website to offer you a paid adless trackless version. For example, I should be able to choose between paying $10 a month and getting no ads and no tracking from google or pay 0 and get both. If I think that is not worth $10, they can bombast me any way they want with ads and play the arms race no matter how nasty they want. I think it is fair and it would show the clear value of targetted ads.
You won't believe what they did next!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Note that the article URL, blockadblock dot com, is that of some sort of anti-adblock piranha (cf. https://github.com/sitexw/Bloc...) so you might want to think twice before clicking it.
I personally, consciously support advertising because I recognize the the value from both the perspective of the advertiser and the website. However I still use adblock because the way these ads work is just downright annoying, but, I leave the acceptable ads option turned on to enable the ones that aren't.
Consider the perspective of the sponsor: When you have a new product you're trying to sell, you need a way to communicate with your customer that it is in fact available for them to buy. Take something you obviously use for example: A personal computer. Now, while you yourself might be well informed about the market and build your own, the vast majority of any given business's potential customers aren't. Advertising is how you reach them.
And then of course, the perspective of the website: They pay actual people actual money to write their content. That money doesn't come in when people don't pay to view it, but it DOES have to come from somewhere. Thus, advertising works suitably.
If some websites are getting tired of adblock, then instead of using anti-adblock scripts (which people create filters to work around these all the time, see the adblock forum) they might try doing the sensible thing and stop using assfucking annoying ads. Either that or if the acceptable ads don't pay enough, then show the regular annoying ads to people who don't use adblock and show acceptable ads to adblock users. Either that or they get nothing at all from adblock users who will either simply opt for a competitor site that has similar content or just find a way to circumvent their anti-adblock script.
Even Google, who is in many respects the king of internet advertising and likely gains the most from it, is trying to get the ad industry to stop with these crap tactics.
Isn't congressional oversight great?
Rest assured it won't happen here.
If MojoKid, StartsWithABang, StewPid and Nerval's Lobster all fall under a bus.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The site I work on uses native advertising (as well as more conventional ads). We prefer the native ads not because we're trying to fool blockers (or indeed users) - the ads are still clearly labelled as such. The reason we prefer them is they perform hugely better. When the ad content fits with the overall content of the site and is actually tailored to the audience it turns out people engage with it - and that makes the advertisers happy and makes us more money.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
What tribes are involved?
Many people us it because they do not like ads. That includes me. I oppose to native advertising. I oppose to any advertising.
I understand that the ads industry has a different point of view, but they can defend themselves if they so like to do and they do that pretty well, as many people defend them without even being paid for it or get anything in return.
They say things like 'I would not mind ads that have XXX'. Well, I do.
Or to quote Banksy:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply youâ(TM)re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. Itâ(TM)s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially donâ(TM)t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, donâ(TM)t even start asking for theirs.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The web sites serving ads don't even know if the ads are annoying. It's all handled by a third party and he website owner fully intends to sit back passively and wait for the money to roll in. They're too busy writing their useless blog to actually pay attention. No real newspaper or television channel would ever use an advertisement that none of the staff has viewed first, yet that is the standard practice on the internet. The web site owners don't do the necessary work to decide what sorts of ads might be relevant to their viewers, they let Google figure that part out.
It's well past he absurdity stage. Youtube required me to watch part of a movie preview first before it let me see the video I wanted, even though that video was a movie preview (this actually happened). Imagine a classic rock radio station playing ads for country music because some algorithm decided that the listener appears to have an interest in music.
The whole attitude that someone "deserves" to be paid because of minimal effort spent creating the content is absurd. No one ever deserves anything, you have to work for it. If the money doesn't come in then find a new job.
You got modded down (obviously), but it's worth pointing out that if native advertising is banned or limited by the FCC, hosts blocking will retain its power indefinitely. The push towards mixing content with manipulative bullshit has always been the weak point of hosts blocking, and probably the biggest reason to not accept hosts based solutions in general.
Consider the perspective of the sponsor: When you have a new product you're trying to sell, you need a way to communicate with your customer that it is in fact available for them to buy. Take something you obviously use for example: A personal computer. Now, while you yourself might be well informed about the market and build your own, the vast majority of any given business's potential customers aren't. Advertising is how you reach them.
Yes, even though advertising is intrinsically bad because it spins, we're a long way from a nirvana where independent editorial is that's perfectly informed about both the market and each person's needs is always affordably available, and where no vendor tries to get an artificial leg-up by advertising anyway. But if we're going to have advertising, there's plenty of better forms of it than paid placements in and around other media. Company websites and point-of-sale for example.
To cover the situation where a start-up is finding it hard to get coverage, I'd support (disclosed) payments that encourage publishers to review or otherwise write about products in their own words. This is much better than a foreign or native ad, where the payment gives the advertiser the right to their own spin.
And then of course, the perspective of the website: They pay actual people actual money to write their content. That money doesn't come in when people don't pay to view it, but it DOES have to come from somewhere. Thus, advertising works suitably.
Advertising is working more and more poorly for information sources. The alternative is to better capture the value that the content gives the users. Direct charging is only one way.
Fox News doesn't necessarily do what is best for Republicans. It appeals to Republicans, but only their instincts that lead those viewers to consume more Fox News.
Basically Fox News capitalizes on Republican outrage, but doesn't necessarily serve Republican interests.
I still think that the best thing that could happen to Fox News was a 2nd term for Obama. It definitely helps their viewership.