Native advertising

Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform.

Product placement (embedded marketing) is a precursor to native advertising. Instead of embedded marketing's technique of placing the product within the content, in native marketing the product and content are merged. Because of this merger of advertising and content, the legal status of native advertising is uncertain, and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop on advertorials and other disguised advertising in 2013.

Despite the ambiguity surrounding native advertising's invention, many experts do consider the Hallmark Hall of Fame, a series which first aired in 1951 and still runs today, as among the earliest instances of the technique. According to Lin Grensing-Pophal, "The award-winning series is arguably one of the earliest examples of 'native' advertising—advertising that is secondary to the message being delivered, but impactful through its association with valued content."

Contemporary formats for native advertising now include promoted videos, images, articles, commentary, music, and other various forms of media. A majority of these methods for delivering the native strategy have been relegated to an online presence, where it is most commonly employed as publisher-produced brand content, a similar concept to the traditional advertorial. Alternative examples of modern technique include search advertising, when ads appear alongside search results that qualify as native to the search experience. Popular examples include, Twitter's promoted Tweets, Facebook's promoted stories, and Tumblr's promoted posts. The most traditionally influenced form of native marketing manifests as the placement of sponsor-funded content alongside editorial content, or showing "other content you might be interested in" which is sponsored by a marketer alongside editorial recommendations.

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Wikipedia