If you have heard about native advertising, chances are what you’ve heard hasn’t been very positive. Native advertising—known also as "sponsored content" or "native content"—became a hot-button topic back in early 2013, when The Atlantic ran the controversial post, “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year,” with a small bar that said “sponsored content” over the headline. The blowback was swift and fierce—the Atlantic took the post down the same day and issued an apology.

Despite the bad rap that comes with native advertising, most publishers are ramping up their sponsored content. According to a Federal Trade Commission survey, 73 percent of online publishers currently offer native ads, and 17 percent were considering offering them. 

So what is native advertising? At its simplest, native advertising is any form of paid or sponsored content that directly and transparently contributes to the experience of the site or platform’s editorial content.

I emphasize “transparently” and “contributes” to call attention to the two critical aspects of successful native advertising:

Transparency

Readers should not feel tricked into reading your post, and there should be clear indicators that the content is branded. This can take many forms. The New York Times, for example, adds “paidpost” to the beginning of the URL, followed by nytimes.com. They also include a banner that says “paid post” and an icon with the company logo next to the author’s name.

Transparency can be a tricky balancing act. On one hand, you don’t want to deceive readers and contribute to brand distrust, but the point of native advertising is that it should fit in with the rest of the page and the content—which brings us to our next point.

Contribution

Native advertising needs to be a balance of value—for the company, for the host publication and for the readers. The best way to do this is to make your content enjoyable to read!

Provide your readers with more value than just information about what makes your brand great. This was one of the big problems with the Atlantic’s Scientology post. Unless they're avid Scientologists, why should readers care about Scientology’s “milestone year”? What’s in it for them?

Forrester Research Inc. developed a test for judging whether you should run a piece of native advertising. For each “yes” answer, add 1. For each “no” answer, subtract 1. A final tally of zero or less is unacceptable—don’t run it. A score of 1 or a 2 means your piece needs improvement, and a score of 3 or 4 means you're ready for primetime.

1.  Could the native advertisement appear on the site unlabeled as advertising without causing backlash? (Note: it should be labeled, but if it wasn’t, would it stand out?)

2.  Is it share-worthy? Is it reasonable to expect that an unmotivated reader would want to share the native advertisement, on Twitter or Facebook for example?

3.  Does it appeal to a clearly defined sub-set of an audience? Native advertising works best against a niche.

4.  Would a reader or viewer of the native advertisement be more likely to prefer your brand?

So why is it controversial?

The primary criticism surrounding branded content is that it’s a “separation of church and state” issue in terms of journalistic ethics for publications. However, native advertising could be more of a matter of the state finding religion—that is, the business world has realized that to capture their audience’s attention they need to create high-quality, authentic content. Increasingly, advertising is drifting away from interruptive, traditional forums and toward more thoughtful (if branded) stories. 

If you’ve used the test from Forrester and have determined to run your native ad, consider these questions from the Interactive Advertising Bureau Native Advertising Playbook as you hammer out the details of where your ad will run and how you will judge its success. 

1.  How does the ad fit with the overall page design? Is it in the viewer’s activity stream or not in-stream?

2.  Does the ad function like other elements on the page in which it is placed? Does it deliver the same type of content experience (video, slideshow, blog, etc.)?

3.  For purchasing, consider if the ad placement is guaranteed on a specific page, section or site, or will it be delivered across a network of sites? What type of targeting is available?

4.  What metrics are used to judge success? Are marketers more likely to use top-of-funnel brand engagement metrics (views, likes, shares, time spent) or bottom funnel (sale, download, data capture)?

5.  How is the ad product disclosed as such?

Ultimately, it may be tempting to avoid native advertising because it’s new, which can be a little scary. But just because there have been some bumps in the road doesn’t mean that native advertising can’t become a valuable part of the content landscape, or that you shouldn’t start including it in your marketing efforts. 

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