QUESTIONS POSTED BELOW, BASED ON THIS CASE STUDY:

"Case Studies for Part III The Four Zones of Social Media: Case Study 5Native Advertising: Novel or Deceptive?

Jennifer Zarzosa, Henderson State University and Sarah Fischbach, California Lutheran University Lisa attentively pays attention to the posts her network of friends and family have posted today on Facebook. After all, this is the best way of getting her news and connecting with whats going on in the world. In fact, Lisa usually only gets her news from Facebook and Twitter anyways. She always makes sure to stay connected with her favorite brands and publishers. Lisa loves when she gets live updatesit makes her feel like an insider. Todays feed features the usual content: cute dog videos, funny memes, happy birthday wishes, inspirational quotes, vacation pictures, and how-to-cook videos. As Lisa scrolls down her Facebook feed, she watches a cute dog video (of course), shares the funny meme, comments Happy b-day! and loves the inspirational quote. Then, Lisa comes across a suggested post by The Gap. Lisa notices her friends Amanda and Marc both like The Gap. The post features the top five fashion trends for the summer. The post has many likes, loves, wows, and even angry faces as well as comments and shares. Eager for more information, she clicks the learn more button. Lisa loves the styles she sees on the landing page and adds a pair of denim jeans and a bright yellow crop top to her cart and checks out shortly. Online advertising has come a long way since the early days when banners, pop-ups, and pop-unders were the prominent form of online advertising. Critics argue banner ads cause wear-out and banner blindness while pop-ups and pop-under ads are usually blocked. Critics claim this type of online advertising is intrusive and therefore ineffective. Consumers have become mobile first, decreasing the use of desktops, which makes desktop online advertising formats obsolete. In response, advertisers have developed new ways to engage with consumers and facilitate interaction. Native advertising blends organic and commercial content seamlessly in order to break through the clutter. According to the Federal Trade Commission, native advertisingsometimes called sponsored contentis the practice of blending advertisements with news, entertainment, and other content in digital media. It refers to advertisements that more closely resemble the content in which they are embedded. Native advertising represents more than a third of its advertising revenue for many publishers. Advocates of native advertising maintain consumers have been conditioned to ignore traditional online advertising. Therefore, advertisers can use native ads to better engage the reader by mixing commercial content with organic content creatively. Social media in-feed ads have distinct benefits over traditional online advertising. Many times in-feed ads have engagement markers (e.g. comments, likes, loves), blend well with organic content, and are endorsed by those in ones network through online word-of-mouth; all of which increase the likelihood of engagement. As a result, publishers also benefit by receiving more advertising revenue. Social media in-feed ads such as Facebook-sponsored posts and Twitter-promoted tweets comprise about 39% of native advertising. Additionally, publishers such as Forbes, The New Yorker, Fast Company, and The Atlantic use advertorials or branded content, another form of native advertising. Critics of native advertising contend consumers cannot identify native advertising as advertising clearly. While social media in-feed ads are effective, in that they blend well with organic content, it is unclear whether consumers can recognize the in-feed ad as an advertisement with commercial intent. Therefore, native advertising could be a form of deceptive advertising. Is the in-feed ad novel or deceptive? The FTC recommends clear and prominent advertising disclosures using visual cues such as shading and borders, and text labels that are explicit, large, and visible to avoid deceptive advertising. Despite this, there is no consensus on disclosure language and visual cues to signal native advertising for publishers. Consequently, publishers use different disclosure language varying in ambiguitysponsored, suggested, promoted, branded content, and presented. When consumers are unable to recognize native ads, opponents of native advertising claim it violates trust between the reader and the publisher. Historically, there has been a divide between editorial and advertising content. The line is now blurred."

1. How would you classify social media in-feed ads?

2. How are social media in feed ads different from display ads and organic social ads

3. Why is lisa more likely to click on the call to action for a social media in feed ad than a display ad

4. Do you think lisa noticed the facebook suggested post by the gap was a native ad? why? if she did, do you think she thought it was deceptive?

5. Based on your own experiences with native advertising, how do you believe native advertising should be regulated?

6. Imagine you are creating disclosure language standards. Describe how you would create the disclosure language standards in terms of visual cues and text labels