News Corp launches first native advertising on news.com.au with theme parks campaign
News Corp is the latest Australian media company to launch a native advertising offering with its first offering part of the Gold Coast: Theme park capital of Australia campaign.
The launch follows Fairfax’s first native advertising venture on behalf of CommBank last month, and the appointment what youth-focused publisher Sound Alliance said was Australia’s first native advertising editor.
The News Corp campaign has launched on news.com.au with an article written by lifestyle reporter Daniel Strudwick.
In keeping with the principle that native advertising covers topics associated with a brand, rather than advertorial which writes about the brand itself, Strudwick writes about ‘why you should do something every day that scares you’ and lists five ways someone can break out of their comfort zone without mentioning the theme park rides paying for the article. The piece is the first of five.
‘Native’ is quickly turning into the latest weasel word.
This is not native advertising it’s sponsored content or advertorial.
To be native it must be created specifically and uniquely for the one channel it appears and be unable to be replicated in any other context.
A Google AdWords campaign, for example, is native to Google.
Sponsored tweets are native to Twitter.
Bah.
WOrks for a site like news.com.au which, despite it’s URL and branding, is less and less a genuine news site as each day passes. Look at their content — its a celebrity-lifestyle site (there’s a reason it was moved into the magazine division of News Corp Australia) – and advertorial has always been part and parcel of celebrity/lifestyle publications.
Agree with Eaon – this isn’t native, it’s (poorly) branded advertorial masquerading as interesting content – funniest waterslide faces ever? WTF?
Sound the horn! Ring the bells! It’s sponsored content! We had that in the 90’s… and the 80’s… and the 70’s…
A ‘news’ website reaching to create a tenuous link between fear of the unknown and a theme park experience does not native advertising make.
I have to admit they got one thing right though, the one time I went to a theme park I felt very uncomfortable.
In their defense. Their printed newspapers are now little more than advertorial for the Liberal and National Parties so why shouldn’t their websites also be little more than advertorial?
The real crime on that web page is the line break in the heading…
News are grasping at straws here. Fairfax advertorials equally out of place and totally miss the point.
@Eaon hits the nail on the head. These are not native.
Shouty skins and 728×90 and 300×250 banners completely undermine the whole idea of it being native as well.
Imagine a radio live-read that was top and tailed with two 30-second commercials by the same advertiser.
Sam G seems furious about native and radio.
“To be native it must be created specifically and uniquely for the one channel it appears and be unable to be replicated in any other context.
A Google AdWords campaign, for example, is native to Google.
Sponsored tweets are native to Twitter.”
So this is a piece of content presented as a news.com.au story, written by a news.com.au journalist, within a news.com.au template, with news.com.au page furniture /design, and most importantly, under the news.com.au masthead. NO other site is able to replicate that (ie to publish the content as a news.com.au story, within the news.com.au site, under the news.com masthead). How is that not native under the above definition?
Blimey Phil, you really have a gripe with News don’t you! I hope you get it off your chest eventually.
I’d love to know how many actual page views this gets – even with the 100% SOV ads around it, it seems quite pointless and so loosely connected to the advertiser.
What did they pay for it?
Uh, the headline…
“Why you should do something every day that scares you”
So… on the days that I am feeling scared, I should do something?
Standing by for another outpouring of bloviation from Paul Barry and Media Watch…
A Google Adwords campaign is not ‘native’ to Google. The ads appear all over third-party websites via the Adsense publisher program. Anyone got a better explanation for native ?? At the moment as far as I can see Native = Advertorial + New Name