Native advertising – the subtle way to promote

“Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform.”- that’s according to Wikipedia.

It is a kind of disguised advertising which most importantly relies on subtle way of promoting the products. It is let’s say the successor of product placement which could be detected by the consumer but this one is harder to feel. As today’s debate of which news over the internet is false or not, I think it is interesting to have a look at this subtle way of marketing communication. As last example of native advertising that I came across I can mention an article in the Vanity Fair magazine, describing a chateau in France. The main point of the article was to describe it itself and mention people who visit it along with the celebrities, but at some point the story was put into the lights the son of owner and it was mentioned as adverbial describing phrase: “he was in his last year in Eaton college”. Considering the target group of the magazine it is most probably a subtle way of advertising Eaton since the son of a noble family is mentioned to study there. Although this example is maybe not the most precise one since in native advertising product is not needed to be mentioned the reader can think of it just by the style of writing and the context of the article. Just by these things associations of the product can appear in his mind which is probably the next level of the stride to reach the consumer who puts enormous efforts to avoid the advertising clutter to which people are highly exposed these days.

The efficiency lies in the fact that the consumer is not directly attacked with the advertising message or words aiming at increasing brand awareness he is subtly and elegantly put, guided in the story. And one of its purposes is to promote a product. Especially, for this example with the Vanity Fair magazine which is famous for its writing style. Native advertising is a kind of evolution in marketing communications and is an interesting tool with more efficiency I think. Perhaps, it shows the advancement of marketers in the war for getting the consumer’s attention. And subtlety is the key for many forms of communication nowadays, not only regarding consumer products but also luxury goods, as I outlined in some previous articles,