• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 5, 2015

Is today the day premium publishers fight back against clickbait? If so, it's long overdue. Those annoying calls to action to see what happened next or to click through to see something you'll never believe is true -- which we all get confronted with in social media and the end of articles -- can be just a tad annoying, to say the least.

Now, they weren't actually mentioned by name by the AOP with its latest research that is being widely reported on today, and the term clickbait doesn't feature in any of the coverage. It's a little strange because I can't do anything other than come away from the AOP's report and think this is a clarion call for decent brands to partner with premium publishers to get informative and entertaining articles (and videos, I presume?) in front of consumers. 

It has long since been a bone of contention for quality publishers that a raft of start-ups are out there trying to replicate the success of BuzzFeed in getting content going viral faster than a traditional publisher can decide on a headline and sub headings. With such revelations as "which dog are you" or "which Game Of Thrones character is you" the endless tsunami of banal content rains down on social media users and any reader who has read all the way down to the bottom of an article. 

The telling statistic, though, within the latest AOP research in to 1500 consumers was that a third of respondents revealed clicking on native ads on premium sites, while just 1% reported the same for social media. That, to me, is not only the AOP saying native advertising is best placed in a premium setting, as you would expect from an association that represents premium publishers -- there is a direct sting in the tail that articles get lost in social media. These may be quality articles that don't get picked up on social media but it is not a stretch to imagine the association is saying social media is full of clickbait articles which the public now recognises and avoids at the same time as suggesting that this has a negative impact on content that is of a higher quality but is shared on social media.

The report goes on to say that native works at its best in conjunction with traditional advertising and that nearly three in five find the format interesting or informative, which is roughly twice the level consumers attribute to traditional advertising. Other than that, however, the results showed that consumers didn't react to native a lot more positively than traditional advertising in terms of engagement drivers of content being helpful, eye-catching and easy to understand.

The takeaway, then, is what brands probably have known all along. Social media, according to the AOP, is held back by people not trusting the sources of information behind content they see being sponsored in their timelines. People not only don't know whether they can trust the source but to my mind, they have almost certainly been put off promoted content in social by endless clickbait. That has to be a part of what the AOP is saying -- perhaps it's too professional to sling stones at another part of publishing, but it must have been hoping that was a subtle message that would be imparted with their findings. No?