Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Therein lies the problem: native advertising is more effective because it masquerades as actual content. But it’s illegal to pass advertising messages off as editorial content. The Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom, for instance, banned a native YouTube ad sponsored by Oreo that featured two well known video bloggers because the agency felt it was not clearly identified as marketing communication.

Stateside, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has long waged war on false advertising—marketing or advertising communications that tend to mislead consumers. Recently, the FTC issued an “enforcement policy statement on deceptively formatted advertisements” giving advertisers and publishers alike a heads up: deceptive native ads will not be tolerated.

So how can your brand capitalize on native advertising without breaking the law? The FTC offers some insight in their guide, “Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses.”...

Marketing forecast? Sunny with a chance of burritos...

Who said content marketing isn’t fun? A recent Adweek story looked at three companies, including Taco Bell, who are buying real-time, mobile ads based on the weather.

Twitter and The Weather Channel were quick to recognize the growing revenue possibilities in mobile marketing. They announced a deal to create custom content based on the weather and sell it to eager marketers....

At a time when good-paying freelance assignments are harder to come by, many journalists are heeding the call of native advertising, where the pay is decent and the work is steady. But there’s a cost. Many worry about the impact on their credibility as a journalist. Some are even finding they aren’t so welcome back in newsrooms once they work for the business side.

In the latest in Digiday’s “Confessions” series, we talked to a veteran freelance writer who has written for top women’s magazines and other national publications about the dark side of native. In this case, the journalist was working for a publisher’s content studio, which assigned stories a given client wanted written....