Guardian article on native advertising irony

Whilst researching my article on the definition of Native Advertising I came across a helpful article in The Guardian. The sub-heading helpfully sums up the thrust of the article thus “The quality and scalability of native advertising means it is filling the gap between brand publishing and banner adverts”. Good to know. They go on to say “Those publications that are pioneering native ads are usually good at making sure the quality of the content is high” – so it’s good quality stuff. “And it seems to be working” they tell us – all very reassuring. “Native ads answer a very important criticism that may yet pop much of the current content marketing bubble: how does it scale? So between the choice of brand publishing that is yet to scale well enough and dated ad formats that do, native advertising, for many, is the smart play.”

So it’s very clear – brand publishing can’t scale, display ads are long gone (“many of us think of the banner ad as ineffectual, limiting and dated”), so native ads are the logical way forward.

All this would be highly credible if the article was actually produced by a journalist. But despite being on The Guardian and clearly intended to be seen as an impartial piece, this was actually written by Outbrain. OUTBRAIN!!!

Now, I have nothing against Outbrain – in fact I’m a fan. But to get an article that eulogises about native, that masquerades as a legit article but which is in fact written by “the world’s largest content discovery platform” is pretty shabby.

The irony of The Guardian using native advertising to provide an article about native advertising which is designed to appear to be a legit article should not be lost on anyone.