Running head: NATIVE ADVERTISEMENT ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
Native Advertisement and its Ethical Implications
Parker Greene
UNIV 112
Professor Jason Corner
4/17/2015
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As the digital age and the internet continue to grow and expand, and have already grown and
expanded, organizations across all industries have struggled to keep up. One of the more
commonly cited examples of an industry hit hard by this expanse is news and journalism. Many
an expert have proclaimed the death of print journalism, and for good reason; the medium has
shrunk in size drastically, with many print news sources going digital, being bought up by larger
corporations, or going outright bankrupt. The primary revenue source of news media shifted
from reader subscriptions (save a few exceptions) and printed advertisements to the readily
recognized sideline ads commonly found on nearly all websites. But as can be surmised, the
changes did not end there. As the average internet user became savvier, and sideline
advertisements became more prevalent and distracting, the effectiveness (and as such
profitability) of such ads quickly diminished, as they became ignored or even blocked outright.
As such, news media, advertisers, and other ad-dependent content makers as a whole, needed to
find other more effective means of advertising. The solution they arrived to was native
advertising.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, an organization “comprised of more than 500 leading
media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the
United States,” describes native advertising as “paid ads that are so cohesive with the page
content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer
simply feels that they belong.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau goes on to break native
advertisement down into six forms; In-Feed Units, Paid Search Units, Recommendation Widgets,
Promoted Listings, In-Ad with Native Element Units, and Other. The form that is most focused
on in ethical discussions, and one of the more common forms, is ‘In-Feed’, which can be one of
the most ‘native’ of the different forms of advertising, designed to meld into the user’s
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experience, to the point where the line between advertisement and actual content is difficult to
ascertain. Sharethrough, “a leading advertising automation company with a platform for realtime buying, selling and management of native in-feed advertising,” describes native advertising
as “a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the
user experience in which it is placed.” The Content Marketing Association describes it as
“branded content placed within third-party editorial sites.” Andrew Sullivan, former editor of
The New Republic, describes it as “an act of deception of the readers and consumers of media
who believe they’re reading the work of an independent journalist.”
These various definitions portray many different interpretations and opinions on native
advertising and its role in the digital world, ranging from describing native advertising as a
beneficial practice with good outcomes all around, to an act of deception betraying the trust
between reader and journalist. Experts in the field, marketers, and even news media institutions
themselves, have all put forward different views and beliefs regarding native advertisement.
Consumers and readers have varying levels of tolerance and even acceptance for types of native
advertisement, some welcoming the paid content as beneficial even. At its basest level, however,
despite all of its possible benefits, Native advertising, when used by news media in journalism, is
a practice that is inherently unethical, as it preys on the trust formed between reader and
journalist to influence the reader in some fashion as intended by the advertiser. The exception to
this being when the native advertising is clearly labeled as such as to leave no confusion in the
reader’s mind, giving them the choice whether or not to view the sponsored content.
Native advertising is one of the most effective forms of advertisement and is now quickly
becoming more common, affecting almost all the content we consume, and in turn the consumer,
making its ethical implications a rather important topic to consider. Even relatively unimportant
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or low brow sources of content can affect the perceptions of their readers, if only in the short
term, ‘priming’ the reader for certain responses to stimuli, which can be all that is needed to push
them towards making a purchase of a product.
Native advertising is unethical because it preys on the relationship of trust between
journalist and reader. The reason native advertising is so effective is because it relies on the
reputation of the site on which the advertising resides. Consumers ignore most other
advertisement because it is clearly from an outside commercial source, and so they feel they can
afford to dismiss it. But when the advertisement is in stream, fused into the content produced by
the writer, the consumer more readily accepts it into their content. Advertisers are taking
advantage of this, they are not using their own work, or their own skills, or relationship with the
reader, to provide advertisement. Eventually this will harm the relationship between reader and
journalist to the point where this tactic is no longer viable; if the journalist is nothing but a
mouthpiece for the advertisers, then they only have as much validity as the advertisers they are
speaking for.
Native advertising is unethical because it obscures the original and underlying intent of
advertising, which is to advertise products. A good advertisement is one that is not deceitful of
its intentions. As marketing moves closer and closer towards a mutual relationship with the
consumer, where they work together more than the market delivers things to the consumer, this
stealthy advertising, trying to trick consumers, damages this growing ecosystem.
It should not be the reader’s responsibility to determine what is and is not deception in an
article. It has been argued that if the reader can’t tell what is or isn’t sponsored content, then it is
not the journalist or the advertiser’s fault if they successfully deceive them. The implication of
this argument is concerning to say the least, as it boils down to ‘if the victim is ignorant of the
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crime done to them, then the criminal is not at fault.’ Taking this argument and applying it to
other situations creates a rather uncomfortable situation, ‘victim blaming.’ It is not the victim’s
fault that the criminal decided to commit a crime, it is on the criminal.
Some individuals make the case that native advertising is actually beneficial, to everyone
involved. The reader receives more content, the content provider receives revenue, and the
advertiser receives (hopefully) more consumers. This relationship between all parties involved
works towards making better content, products, and consumers, and should be welcomed in our
growing and changing environment. While this optimistic outlook on things does paint a nice
picture, it fails to account for two things; the fact that not all native advertisement is beneficial,
useful, or even truthful, and the fact that even if this relationship is beneficial, it can still be
considered unethical. Firstly, an article could very well be made for the express purpose of
deceiving people, or some other shady purpose. These articles could be completely devoid of
any indication that they are, in fact, advertisements, and are intended to take advantage of the
reader to get them involved with something the advertiser wants them to be involved with.
Cracked is particularly guilty of this, with no indication of sponsored content save for perhaps a
mention of a sweepstakes or contest from the advertiser at the end. The reader does not benefit
at all, really, from these articles, they are really just used primarily as sources of income for
cracked. This same situation can be found in numerous other sources, of particular note being
gaming journalism, with many sites giving positive coverage to developers or games or triple A
companies without disclosing relationships, gifts, or employment status in their articles,
sometimes former (or even current) PR employees from companies writing articles for such sites
with no discloser within them. This behavior, try as hard as they might to say otherwise, is
unethical and deceitful. Secondly, even if their behavior is beneficial to all parties involved, the
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deception of such content still stands. Beneficial and deceptive are not necessarily mutually
exclusive. A doctor could perhaps deceive a patient in their last hours of life to give them peace
of mind, or a hostage could misdirect bank robbers to lead them to the police, or to save other
innocents. While these are extreme examples, the basic premise of “being deceitful does not
necessarily mean being evil,” stands. What this does mean however, is that it is still unethical. It
is not common to forego one’s ethics (or a certain portion of them in favor of another), for some
beneficial reward or consequence. While the reader is not unethical in this situation, the
journalist and advertiser are, in the sense that they are duplicitous in their message in an attempt
to persuade the buyer to purchase a product, or think a certain way, or any other such goal of
their advertising. The end result may be of benefit to all; the reader gets content, the journalist
gets paid, and the advertiser gets customers, but the base result of unethicalness remains, these
beneficial results came about from an inherently unethical or misdirecting process, pulling the
attention of the reader away from the content they wish to read, and turning that content into an
advertisement.
Native advertising indicates that journalism is no longer necessary, if equal or higher
quality articles can be produced by advertisers, journalist’s role as middle-men will soon be at an
end. One of the previous arguments brought up raises the point that native advertising content
can be just as entertaining, informative, or persuasive as regular content, if not more so. This
brings up complications in its own right. If advertisers can create and curate content better than
the journalists can, then why even have journalists in the first place. The primary reason for this
is trust. The journalist and the reader still have a solid relationship of trust between them,
although with such practices as native advertisement, this trust is dwindling. It is not
unreasonable to say that in the long term, the quality of content advertisements will have grown
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and the trust between reader and journalist diminish so much to the point that the previous duties
of the journalist become obsolete, and the advertiser takes over full scale. The question then
would be whether or not such content from there on out would be considered native advertising,
or just regular advertising. Journalism can very well be said to be dying now, as the number of
journalists is dwindling (as can be evidenced by comparing the number of newspapers of a few
decades ago to today) and a number of controversies surrounding them in the present day harm
their reputation and trustworthiness. Peer driven news, content, and entertainment in the form of
forums, internet personalities, and other such online communities, have come to the forefront in
the dissemination of information to internet savvy users. Even in these mediums native
advertising can be found, whether in the form of a seeming innocuous Reddit post that is actually
a PR piece from a company, or a sponsored game review from a popular Youtube video game
personality paid for by a game developer, such native advertisements, especially in undisclosed
situations, abound. Meaning that even if journalism dies, the issue of native advertising will
continue, unless advertisers create their own personalities to use for their own purposes, and
make them more effective and more appealing to consumers than the unsponsored personalities
they enjoy now.
Native advertising is unethical for its deception, to become ethical it must be obvious that
it is an advertisement. Deceit, untruthfulness, deception, lying, these can all be used to describe
some types of native advertisement. As this method of advertising grows and develops, and
content and media grows and develops along with it, advertisers and content creators alike must
work together to make sure they do not harm the content ecosystem, take advantage of readers,
or damage the media environment beyond repair. Native advertisement, unless explicitly
obviously that is advertisement, is unethical in this regard, and should be dealt with.
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References
Brown, A. T., & Smallwood, K. (2012, September 26). 7 Amazing Things People Got Just by
Asking. Cracked.
Deziel, M. (n.d.). Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn't Work. New York Times.
Hartwig, E. (2013, March 12). 5 Heartwarming Stories That Prove Dog Is Man's Best Friend.
Mashable.
How to Transform into a Total Nerd-Babe. (2013, January 17). Gawker.
Interactive Advertising Bureau. (2013, December 4). Native Advertising Playbook. Retrieved
from iab.net: www.iab.net/media/file/IAB-Native-Advertising-Playbook2.pdf
Keers, P. (2013, July 22). Why content marketing should be going native. Content Marketing
Association. Retrieved from www.the-cma.com/news/why-content-marketing-should-begoing-native
Macdonald, N. (2015, Fedbruary 15). Ads masquerading as journalism, the slippery slope of
branded content. CBC News.
Sharethrough Native Advertising. (n.d.). Retrieved from Sharethrough:
sharethrough.com/nativeadvertising/