By Laura Davison
Journalists have plenty of new things to tackle these days: Facebook Graph, Quora’s new blogging platform and keeping their online presence
looking as spiffy as the New Republic’s.
And the never-ending to do list keeps growing: what’s the
deal with sponsored content? Or you might have heard it referred to as one of
its many other names— content marketing, native advertising or paid content. As Mashable
outlines, the jury’s still out on what term the industry will adopt.
No matter the name, the idea is brands, instead of
placing display ads online, create multimedia content with the help of the an
editorial member of a news organization. This content has the look and feel of
the other content on the site, except for some designation marking it as
sponsored. News organizations get paid to create this content and advertisers
have a more dynamic platform to share their brand.
Financially, it looks like a win for both. The desire for native
advertising is being driven by two forces: the need for additional sources of
revenue and the way users interact with advertising online has changed greatly
in the past decade. Online banner advertising had a click-through rate of 9
percent in 2000, according to
Mashable. Last year it was 0.2 percent. Zero point two. When you’re
getting paid by the click, that just doesn’t cut it.
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| A screenshot of the Scientology sponsored post in the Atlantic |
It’s no surprise that news organizations have looked to
sponsored content, which is more engaging and less advertisement-y, as a
potential source of revenue. Big outlets like NBC Digital, Forbes, Buzzfeed and
most recently, the Atlantic, are all among organizations experimenting with it.
But some journalists have ethical concerns about content
that looks so similar to the journalism also on the site. Earlier this month,
the Atlantic ran a sponsored post for the Church of Scientology. Readers were
confused and upset by the content, which was a piece praising Scientology’s
recent accomplishments. Users were allowed to comment and negative ads were
suppressed. It’s since been taken down, but you can still see a pdf of the post.
Only a small yellow tab at the beginning of the story noted that it was an advertorial.
The Atlantic admitted that, “They screwed up.”
