Inside PR 3.39: A Change for Native Advertising

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The FTC recently sent a letter to Google, Yahoo!, Bing about native advertising and how they must require their users to show what is paid and what is not, in terms of content.

This changes the stage a bit for native advertising. In what started out as a paid play that looked just like the content shared on the site, it now must be disclosed it is actually different than everything else because it was paid for or sponsored.

Not unlike adding “advertorial” or “paid advertising” across the top of content in magazines, this new rule follows the FTC disclosure guidelines they’ve been aggressively promoting for years.

As PR professionals, we lean toward the editorial side, but because native advertising wants to look and feel and sound like valuable content, it is quickly becoming our jobs to figure out how this will play out for our organizations or our client’s organizations.

But native advertising is not a trend started by the PR industry; it was started by our advertising colleagues, but it also serves the needs of media outlets who are on a one-way street. Because of that, communications professionals need to experiment to help journalists make this work. It becomes about how we create content that serves our audience, is not an intrusion, is fun, informative, and increases value of earned media.

It is, in fact, not unlike what the ad agencies are doing with longer form videos that serve as shareable commercials.

Also during this episode, learn about the mistake Martin Waxman made during last week’s podcast and what Richard Edelman shared at IABC about the future of PR.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini DietrichJoseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR #132 – Wednesday, October 8, 2008

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This week on Inside PR Terry Fallis, David Jones, and Martin Waxman discuss the current state of the economy and the recent Canadian and US political debates.

Show Notes

00:27 Terry opens the show.

01:40 Martin introduces the topic of discussion: The current state of the economy.

02:26 Martin mentions Richard Edelman‘s blog post on how Secretary of Treasury Paulson, and others, have not done a good job of communicating this story.

02:43 Martin talks about putting media stories, such as this one, into human terms.

03:05 Terry talks to responsible reporting.

05:35 Dave talks about business reporting and the connection to PR: getting your message through.

07:34 Martin brings up the topic of Canadian media’s tendency to tag onto the bigger US stories.

16:18 Terry discusses the US Presidential debate.

18:26 Martin discusses the US Vice-Presidential debate.

20:34 Martin talks about a post by Giovanni Rodriguez of the hubbub blog, where he discusses how the VP candidates were trained too well.

21:37 Dave discusses the VP debate.

23:37 Terry discusses the recent Canadian Prime Minister debate.

32:37 Martin discusses the effects of the online world on politics.

33: 05 Dave discusses the online world and politics.

35:19 Dave closes the show.

Our theme music is Streetwalker by Cjacks and is courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Janna Guberman.