Hasta La Creative!

Online advertising is a tricky game, reliant on continued innovation from publishers and advertisers as they try to capture consumers’ attention. The latest effort to move beyond traditional banners is so-called “native advertising” — advertising that looks and feels like the content of a site.

But native advertising in practice is often more complex than that simple definition, which has created a lot of confusion about what qualifies as native, how to clearly mark this content and who is responsible for maintaining the consumer experience. In December, the Federal Trade Commission will lead a workshop exploring the “blurring lines” (its words) between online content and advertising. It’s not clear what will come out of the workshop, but there are a few things we’d like to see.

Standard Definition. The biggest need is a clear understanding of what “native” means, because this kind of advertising comes in many shapes, forms and labels. Most of the time, when people talk about native they mean a slightly evolved version advertorials, which print publications have been running for years, now matched to the tone and appearance of a site’s surrounding editorial content.

Continue reading at AdAge.com