Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
The Federal Trade Commission spent a full day yesterday, listening to 22 representatives from publishing, technology and academia to tackle that most thorny of questions: How to label native advertising.
There were arguments on all sides, with one academic even suggesting the need to study how the eye’s fovea perceives various labeling. Publishers hedged, they cautioned against the dreaded “one-size-fits-all” approach since native ads can apparently vary so widely. That’s why there is a BrandVoice on Forbes, Featured Partners on BuzzFeed, “From Around the Web” from Outbrain, “You May Like” from Tablooa, and so on.
Coincidentally, most also paid fealty to paid search listings, hailed as the original native ad format: a form of content, perfectly suited to the environment, and found genuinely useful to consumers who click away to the tune of billions for Google’s coffers. Perhaps then the industry should keep it simple and cast its gaze on how Google has settled on labeling this “native” format:
More in Media
How The Times is using AI to model synthetic focus groups from human audiences
The British news publisher has worked with Electric Twin to create a synthetic audience research panel based on The Times’ human reader panel.
Ranking is out, visibility is in as publishers chip away at AI search optimization
In the AI era, measuring pageviews isn’t enough — publishers need a new metrics stack that tracks how they are cited in AI engines and ties it all to clicks and revenue.
How U.K. news group Reach is diversifying traffic sources amid zero-click threat
Reach is diversifying beyond Google by leaning on news aggregators and monetizing Facebook engagement to offset declining search traffic.