Native Advertising

Native advertising "matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears" ("Native Advertising") and is a relatively new trend occurring today.  Because of social media sites,  particularly BuzzFeed, companies are able to promote and publish their own posts "disguised" as a regular post. BuzzFeed makes this very possible, given the general setup of the website. Many believe that native advertising is somewhat subversive and even subliminal, as there is very little to distinguish a promoted, native post from a post by an author of the site. 

Personally, I believe that native advertising is not subversive, but more an intelligent utilization of new media. These companies (usually, as I cannot speak for all media) pay for the post and for their logo to appear with the article. Even though these logos and tags annotating that the companies are, in fact, sponsoring the post is relatively small and unnoticeable, they are still found on the post.

There are three types of native advertising ("Native Advertising"):

1. Closed platforms are brands creating profiles and/or content within a platform, then promoting that content within the confines of that same closed platform. Examples include Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Sponsored Stories on Facebook, City, Vivas and TrueView Video Ads on YouTube. Large publishers, such as Washington Post, have recently started introducing their own native advertising formats.
2. Open platforms are defined by promoting the same piece of branded content across multiple platforms within native ad formats. Unlike closed platforms, the branded content asset lives outside the platform.
3. Hybrid platforms allow publishers to install a private marketplace, while having the option to allow advertisers from other platforms to bid on the same inventory either through direct sales or programmatically through Real-Time Bidding (RTB).

Another example of native advertising (kind of? Maybe?) would be the Reebok store found in Second Life that we discussed in class. Reebok paid Second Life to host their "store" and logo in the game, attempting to drive sales both actually and virtually.

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"Native Advertising." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising