Organizations continue to embrace native advertising, if cautiously

With more marketers eager to shift their messages away from dull display ads to more creative and effective digital formats, news organizations continue to embrace native advertising, if cautiously.

With more marketers eager to shift their messages away from dull display ads to more creative and effective digital formats, news organizations continue to embrace native advertising, if cautiously.

NBC News has experimented with native ads on some properties—including Breaking News,Today.com and CNBC—but not its flagship site, NBCNews.com.

That may be about to change.

“We’re still looking for the right content and the right advertiser—everyone’s open for it, but we’re not going to force it in,” said Peter Naylor, evp of digital media at NBC News Digital Group.

Following other news orgs, Naylor stressed that NBC has strict guidelines for native ads. He said, “The first rule is that there can’t be one user who doesn’t understand the difference between the editorial content and the advertiser content. The second rule is the editorial staff will never really be called upon to help create this content. Editorial will continue to create editorial—marketing and ad professionals will work on ad content.”