Native Advertising

An advertorial sold digitally – and often programmatically – so it needed an entirely new name.

It is supposed to be clearly delineated as advertising, but that does not always happen in practice. Additionally, what is clear to the advertiser or publisher is not always clear to people viewing the ads.

“Native” implies that such advertising is indigenous to a publisher. This might have been true in the early days of the soap opera, such as when Procter & Gamble laundry soap brand Oxydol sponsored the national rollout of NBC radio series Ma Perkins. Jeff Suess reported in Cincinnati Enquirer, “The connection to Oxydol was so strong that the show was often called Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins.”

That is a native ad. Most ads are immigrants. Acts of illegal immigration are more common in advertising than American demography (see also: Fraud).