by Charlie Stewart. I’m flabbergasted at the way the marketing industry’s misappropriated the word “native” and applied it to something that’s so patently not.
Tag archives: native advertising
Native Advertising: Traditional Advertising Online
Mashable recently asked the question, “Is Native Advertising Just Another Term For Good Advertising?” The answer is no, not quite.
From what I can tell, native advertising is a horrible and misleading term that is being used to describe something that may actually turn out to be a good idea — the application of traditional advertising principles to online advertising. Let me explain.
Online advertising was supposed to be interactive. It was supposed to rescue us from having to force people into looking at our ads. Consumers were going to want to interact with us, they were going to want to have conversations with marketers, they were going to want to have relationships with brands.
It was all fantasies and delusions based on naive interpretations of consumer behavior by people who had a whole lot of ideological commitment to the web, and very little experience with real world marketing.
Now we’ve learned that, for the most part, consumers want no part of interacting with online advertising. What we are calling “native advertising” is a recent reaction to this realization and to the very disappointing history of online advertising, particularly banner advertising.
Nobody seems quite sure what they mean by native advertising. But I think I know what they mean. They don’t know it yet, but they mean using traditional advertising strategy on the web.