High all! Everyone is hard at work creating fun and exciting projects. In the next few hours, students are going to start posting their versions of Native Ads.

What are Native Ads? Well, to put it simply, Native Ads are paid advertisements that are designed to look like the surrounding content. You’ve probably seen these ads on someone’s Instagram, framed with the words “sponsored content.” Or this New York Times article asking if college is still worth it, sponsored by Discover Student Loans (of course, they said yes).

And let’s not forget the infamous Scientology ad posted by The Atlantic. That didn’t go well for them, but it did raise important questions: First, how should companies go about the business of advertising in a rapidly changing environment. People are not tuning into television for traditional ads. In fact, I just updated my HULU subscription to get rid of ads.

Second, what are the ethics involved in creating advertisements that blend into regular digital media content? The response to The Atlantic article suggests that people want to, in fact, believe they have a right to, know when they are being pitched to.

Everyone in my class agrees that Native Advertisements walk a fine line of ethics. It’s one thing to have very obvious Toyota product placement in an episode of Bones (which is another interesting conversation), but it is another thing altogether to have major publications like The Atlantic housing a propaganda piece. The academic equivalent of this would be a scientist and professor conducting research, writing an article, and publishing an article on the benefits of Fentynal without disclosing that his or her work is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.

Well, maybe not that dramatic, but this is serious business.

Another thing we have tried to suss-out in this class is what constitutes a native ad. I have a colleague who believes that anything we encounter that presents a call-to-action, especially a call that involves a product or service, is a Native Ad; this includes book reviews or film reviews.

I’m not sure I agree. It is another aspect of advertising that will have to be debated in our new digital age.

In any case, the students had to compose Native Ads. You will see a variety of content. Some of the ads will be in the form of blog posts, and some will take other forms. There are two main goals for this assignment: Try to sell something, but don’t make it obvious that you are trying to sell something. That was the task before them.

This also gives the students some experience with creating ads in digital spaces like WordPress, which is a platform many news organizations use already. I look forward to seeing what they have come up with.

-Dr. W