Be relevant, be transparent

Doing native advertising right is not that difficult

Readers have the power. Online, unencumbered by the reduced choices imposed by the economics of old media publishing models, readers do actually decide what they read and what they don’t with a level of granularity in their choices previously unheard of. General interest publications with uneven levels of depth on different topics have seen their prevalence challenged by more nimble specialized publications narrowly focused on specific topics. Readers pick and choose their sources with unforgiving easiness. This is the landscape of professional online publishing today.

To compete in such a market, online publications need to be relevant. They need to cater for the topics their readers are passionate about, covering them with knowledgeable, thorough and articulated specialized writters. They also need to make users’ experiences as nimble and friendly as possible.

Native online publications, and many evolved old media ones, also realize that building an audience is not enough. You need to go one more step ahead and enable participation, sharing, communication between users and emotional attachment to turn that audience into a community. To build a community of loyal readers who identify themselves with your media title. That’s what ultimately builds loyalty.

Yet when you look at how those same publications try to make money, when we look at how advertisers try to reach those audiences, somehow many of those ideas get strangely forgotten. When we talk about advertising, readers are still in control. Even more so. For every nasty interruption-driven advertising trick there is a technological solution to bypass it. For every ad-heavy content-light publication there is a reasonably balanced one on the same topic. And readers know how to navigate through all this.

If brands want to attract the attention of the communities created around many great specialized online sites, they basically need two ingredients: relevance and transparency.

Relevance

They need to tell stories, provide information, be useful. They need to create content that is valuable to the specific readers of the site. They need to understand the community created around that specific site. Their interests and the formats in which they generate and consume content. And then they need to find out ways to create value for the community that is also valuable for them. That helps them position their product or brand. That helps them stay in the top of mind of potential clients or key influentials. More often than not is not going to be talking about your product.

Transparency

The second ingredient to this formula is transparency. If any content on a site is there because a brand paid for it to be there, this has to be disclosed to the readers. It has to be easily identifiable. It does not mean that a content piece disclosed as advertiser-commissioned is worthless or that it will be automatically discarted by readers, provided that the relevance ingredient is present. It just means that the readers is now capable of weighting in the source of the information when assessing the credibility it assigns to it.

It is also better if the editorial team that creates the content of the publication is not the same team that creates the advertising content. You might need the same level of insight, passion for the topic and knowledge. But better have two separate teams so there is no confusion in anyones minds about who is doing what and why.

Native advertising done wrong

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote a post in which he is very critical of native advertising. Matt Cutts recently also reminded web owners about Google vigilance on this topic. I dare say both are mainly concerned about native advertising done wrong. About not disclosing its nature. About mixing advertising and editorial. About misleading readers. That is not the intent of native advertising. Or at least it should not be. I think native advertising can also be done right.