Traditional advertising mainstays — like print journalism — are collapsing, while targeting platforms and interactive media haven’t yet proven their value to brands, in the face of an increasingly adversarial commercial-skipping, ad-blocking public.
Native advertising is the attempt to integrate advertising into users’ experiences: think Pepsi sponsoring BuzzFeed articles or “promoted” posts in the Facebook newsfeed. The hope is that brands will make a stronger, less intrusive impression, all while sponsoring the media and software products users have come to expect for free.
That may be why Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer seems to be betting the company on getting native advertising right, and Google is redesigning their search page to soften the separation between sponsored and “organic” results.
