As a result of nine out of ten people being cheated on native advertisements, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish whether it is an advertisement or a genuine article

by Elijah O'Donnell

Many major news media such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, etc. now post sponsored content , so-called "native advertisements". Forbes estimates that the size of native ads will reach $ 21 billion (approximately 2.3 trillion yen) by 2021, and we expect to be 75% of the total advertising revenue. Studies investigating how modern native ads are skillful and how many people are cheated are open to the public.

Reducing Native Advertising Deception: Revisiting the Antecedents and Consequences of Persuasion Knowledge in Digital News Contexts: Mass Communication and Society: Vol 0, No 0
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2018.1530792

Native Advertising in the Fake News Era | Research
https://www.bu.edu/research/articles/native-advertising-in-fake-news-era/

In addition to increasing the number of native ads, it is said to be "fooling readers", said Michelle Amazeen, associate professor at Boston communication college. The subjects of the experiment conducted by Mr. Amazeen said that nine out of ten people thought that they were "watching articles" despite actually seeing advertisements.

This survey was conducted by Mr. Amazeen on 738 people with diverse age, educational background, marital status and political thinking with Mr. Bartosz Wojdynski of Georgia University on-line.

In the experiment, I asked the subject to see the actual Bank of America advertisement. This ad is an article titled " America's Smartphone Obsession Extends to Online Banking (obsession for American smartphones extends to online banking)", a marketing company Brandpoint created for Bank of America . As the Federal Trade Commission in the United States asks the advertiser to disclose that the content is an advertisement, the article has a label or description indicating that it is an advertisement.

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According to Amazeen, there was less than 1 in 10 people who read the article and recognized that it was one of Bank of America's advertisements. People who are educated and have a low age and who can use the news media as a means of getting information from usual are able to see through advertisements, are older, are not educated, and have news media for entertainment purposes It seems that there was a tendency to think that advertisement is a real news article as people using it.

Also, if you know that the article is an advertisement, subjects will be more receptive to the content, but if the content is hard to understand as an advertisement, the majority of the readers are negative when it is known that it is an advertisement The reaction is shown by Amazeen. "Many people think that this ad is the same as fake news.The trust in the media is the lowest in history, I do not think that it is due only to native advertisement, but in one of the factors I think there is, "Amazeen said.

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Advertisers need to explicitly state that they are advertisements when advertising, but this method is not standardized. Generally, a label such as "advertisement" is affixed, but the size of the label and the place to put the label are various. Since it is not standardized to clearly indicate that it is a native advertisement, it makes it more difficult for readers to distinguish between "advertisement" and "real article". "The Federal Trade Commission says that advertisements should be true and accurate content." "However, despite what advertisers are trying to communicate, certain information that is not desirable is excluded," Amazeen said I pointed out the problem.

Many media have done nice advertising while doing excellent research reports, and Amazeen expresses "About digging a grave hole" about these media. As an example, while publishing a fake news database in which politico 's politico news media accumulated false news, he has mixed many native ads into his website Pointed out. Is a political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica (Cambridge Analytica) Brittany Kaiser who was business development director of the sponsored content made by Poritiko is that it is "the most successful ones were," he says .

"The thing to watch out for is to blur the boundary between news and advertisements, one step down and you have to think about what you are reading once again," Amazeen called.