Paid Content

I found the Forbes article about advertising and paid content to be interesting and informative. I never really thought too much about advertising from a journalistic standpoint, but as a person I've always found it to be kind of annoying online. In the article, it talked about native advertising/sponsored content and I think that's one of the most annoying things. I don't like how advertisements are just slipped into news feeds on Facebook or into the feed on Twitter. It's annoying because advertisers just throw their content in between status updates or tweets like it's just another update from a friend or something. They try to pass it off as something that's supposed to be there, but I don't think it works. It always irritates me when I see these when scrolling through my feed. I also don't like the pop up advertising. You'll be reading an article and all of a sudden a video comes across the screen and starts playing automatically. I find the display ads to be the least annoying, but as the article said, they're the least effective.

As for paid content though, I think it can work. I see it a lot in the magazines I read and they blend in well. It's still obvious that it's an ad, but if it's done well, I'll still want to read it. They usually go along with the style and layout of the magazine and are targeted to whoever is reading the magazine (or newspaper). I don't find these ads to be annoying because they're not in your face. I suppose it is kind of like native content, but it's different because it's not on social media. I don't really mind paid content because it's usually something you could see the magazine writing about anyways. If I were the editor or owner of a paper or magazine and an advertiser wanted to do paid content, I would only let them do it if it went along with the theme of the publication. For example, if it was a health and wellness magazine, I wouldn't want a big paid content ad that was trying to sell diet pills. If there was a company that was selling a health product that was actually helpful (like a yoga studio or work out gear) then I'd be ok with that.

As for journalists writing these ads, I think it's very smart of advertisers to do this. Who better to pass off an ad as journalism than a journalist? If you want the writing to be clean and in sync with a certain style, then I think a journalist would be best to write it. Also, they're not wired to think like an advertiser trying to sell a product so their writing wouldn't come off this way either. It wouldn't be over dramatic or in your face, it would be straightforward and informative. I think this is a good direction for advertising to go in, as long it's done well and journalistically and doesn't hide that it's an ad.