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.

Comments

Good - but it was going to happen anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's not about adblockers...

[radish]

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.