The Soap Opera Gets A New Name: Native Advertising

Alright, alright, alright! We give up. We'll write about native advertising. If there's any one thing the advertising industry is good at, it's putting a shiny new wrapper on something that's been around for a very long time. Take, for example, Native Advertising.

As described by digital ad firm Solve Media, "Native advertising refers to a specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience by providing value through relevant content delivered in-stream."

Hmm. Remember soap operas? Relevant content created for TV (a stream, if you will) just so P&G and others could sell soap. Seriously, youngsters, that's why soap operas were invented.

How about the Hallmark channel? Advertorials? Paid content? This site's own AdverPost (that blue-shaded box which has appeared as the second story on pages since 2002)?

If native advertising advocates want to argue these methods of advertising aren't in-stream, rather interruptive, we'd argue so are native ad placements. They're an ad disguised as content placed in-stream with the rest of the news. We call that an interruption.

Yes, we get that native advertising has a bit of a different spin this time around but the purpose is the same; content created for the sole purpose of selling something. You can pretty it up any way you like but it's still an ad.

Anyway, take a look at Solve Media's infographic which gives an overview of native advertising, what it is, what it isn't, how it works and how it can be used.