Last Thursday brought yet another great event in the city, this time with the
Content & Cocktails NYC Meetup group. The event was hosted at the
NewsCred headquarters in the Flatiron District, and featured a short and meaty presentation on native advertising - a.k.a., paid posts, sponsored content, 'advertorials,' etc.
(And, yes, I know I need to get back to my
Walkabout series, there's just so much to write about, and so little time!)
Back to Content & Cocktails... after a boisterous pre-presentation networking session, the co-founder and CEO of NewsCred - Shafqat Islam - sat down to discuss the evening's topic with Erin Pettigrew, exectuive director of business development for
Gawker.
Approaching the topic of native advertising requires a delicate touch. For media companies that survive mainly off of ad revenue, and for brands that want to draw in potential clients, the idea of "presenting products in a way that people find more familiar and engaging than typical ads" is certainly an attractive prospect. However, as Erin put it, "it's editorially not cool" for brands to pay media outlets for exposure, without clear disclosure that the provided content is a paid collaboration between the publication and the sponsoring organization. Readers are very sensitive to being lied to or tricked, and it would be brand suicide (not to mention of dubious legality) for any company to squander the currency of earned trust in this way.
