Question

QUESTIONS POSTED BELOW, BASED ON THIS CASE STUDY:

"Case Studies for Part III The Four Zones of Social Media: Case Study 5—Native Advertising: Novel or Deceptive?

Jennifer Zarzosa, Henderson State University and Sarah Fischbach, California Lutheran University Lisa attentively pays attention to the posts her network of friends and family have posted today on Facebook. After all, this is the best way of getting her news and connecting with what’s going on in the world. In fact, Lisa usually only gets her news from Facebook and Twitter anyways. She always makes sure to stay connected with her favorite brands and publishers. Lisa loves when she gets live updates—it makes her feel like an insider. Today’s feed features the usual content: cute dog videos, funny memes, happy birthday wishes, inspirational quotes, vacation pictures, and how-to-cook videos. As Lisa scrolls down her Facebook feed, she watches a cute dog video (of course), shares the funny meme, comments “Happy b-day!” and loves the inspirational quote. Then, Lisa comes across a suggested post by The Gap. Lisa notices her friends Amanda and Marc both like The Gap. The post features the top five fashion trends for the summer. The post has many likes, loves, wows, and even angry faces as well as comments and shares. Eager for more information, she clicks the “learn more” button. Lisa loves the styles she sees on the landing page and adds a pair of denim jeans and a bright yellow crop top to her cart and checks out shortly. Online advertising has come a long way since the early days when banners, pop-ups, and pop-unders were the prominent form of online advertising. Critics argue banner ads cause wear-out and banner blindness while pop-ups and pop-under ads are usually blocked. Critics claim this type of online advertising is intrusive and therefore ineffective. Consumers have become mobile first, decreasing the use of desktops, which makes desktop online advertising formats obsolete. In response, advertisers have developed new ways to engage with consumers and facilitate interaction. Native advertising blends organic and commercial content seamlessly in order to break through the clutter. According to the Federal Trade Commission, native advertising—sometimes called sponsored content—is the practice of blending advertisements with news, entertainment, and other content in digital media. It refers to advertisements that more closely resemble the content in which they are embedded. Native advertising represents more than a third of its advertising revenue for many publishers. Advocates of native advertising maintain consumers have been conditioned to ignore traditional online advertising. Therefore, advertisers can use native ads to better engage the reader by mixing commercial content with organic content creatively. Social media in-feed ads have distinct benefits over traditional online advertising. Many times in-feed ads have engagement markers (e.g. comments, likes, loves), blend well with organic content, and are endorsed by those in one’s network through online word-of-mouth; all of which increase the likelihood of engagement. As a result, publishers also benefit by receiving more advertising revenue. Social media in-feed ads such as Facebook-sponsored posts and Twitter-promoted tweets comprise about 39% of native advertising. Additionally, publishers such as Forbes, The New Yorker, Fast Company, and The Atlantic use advertorials or branded content, another form of native advertising. Critics of native advertising contend consumers cannot identify native advertising as advertising clearly. While social media in-feed ads are effective, in that they blend well with organic content, it is unclear whether consumers can recognize the in-feed ad as an advertisement with commercial intent. Therefore, native advertising could be a form of deceptive advertising. Is the in-feed ad novel or deceptive? The FTC recommends clear and prominent advertising disclosures using visual cues such as shading and borders, and text labels that are explicit, large, and visible to avoid deceptive advertising. Despite this, there is no consensus on disclosure language and visual cues to signal native advertising for publishers. Consequently, publishers use different disclosure language varying in ambiguity—sponsored, suggested, promoted, branded content, and presented. When consumers are unable to recognize native ads, opponents of native advertising claim it violates trust between the reader and the publisher. Historically, there has been a divide between editorial and advertising content. The line is now blurred."

1. How would you classify social media in-feed ads?

2. How are social media in feed ads different from display ads and organic social ads

3. Why is lisa more likely to click on the call to action for a social media in feed ad than a display ad

4. Do you think lisa noticed the facebook suggested post by the gap was a native ad? why? if she did, do you think she thought it was deceptive?

5. Based on your own experiences with native advertising, how do you believe native advertising should be regulated?

6. Imagine you are creating disclosure language standards. Describe how you would create the disclosure language standards in terms of visual cues and text labels

Answer 1

A1) Social Media in-feed ads are very intrusive. They exploit the weakness of the mind's inability to distinguish it from a normal social post. This is same as fraud as it manipulates the end-user to venturing into something that is good for someone else's business. Although in-feed ads fall into the category of native advertising, it should not be so. The fine lines between native and intrusive advertising strategies have been exploited by advertising giants by basing it on some technicality, which the platforms like Facebook are happy to give in to, as it is one of their major revenue source.

A2) Social media in-feed ads have more app integrations than display ads. For instance, in this particular case, the platform showed other friends of Lisa's who like the page and its posts. This is a leverage that in the in-feed ads have over the display ads. Moreover it also displayed the number of likes, comments and shares and most importantly the Learn More button which directly takes her to the website which means a direct engagement for the company. To top all this, the main attribute which makes in-feed ads the popular choice among advertisers is the deception that they can provide which tricks the users to believing that it is rather a shared post than an actual advertisement.

A3) This is more or less the same reason as to the point given in the previous answer. In a nutshell, integrations like displaying comments, likes and shares from online friend circles, the learn more direct engagement button and the deception that it gives the end-users like Lisa to think that it is not an actual advertisement.

A4) Lisa initially was not led into realizing that it was an ad because of the fact there were the integrations present and it made it look like a normal post to Lisa. But later when she clicked the engagement it is sure that Lisa had realized that it was an ad after all. The initial part of this whole process is what the mistake with these kinds of ads is. To think whether it is deceptive or not is subjective and depends on some other factors like if Lisa was glad to see that ad or not (in this case she did) or when it sometimes seem so creepy to have shown your preferences shown to you.

A5) Strict regulations should be brought. A unified protocol that can work across multiple platforms can serve as a standard benchmark to determine if any service is violating advertising rules are not. The revenue generated from massively intrusive ads must be made low so that these platforms can be discouraged to support the same on their websites.

A6) Native advertisements should clearly state if they are ads or not. It should be made easy for the end-users to distinguish ads from normal posts in the first glance itself. Adding different text styles and sizes will certainly help. Putting it in the same layout as other posts makes it deceptive rather it will be better if a certain offset can be given like in the case of Twitter.