• by Joe Mandese , November 5, 2013

“Native” advertising (note the quotation marks) defies -- or at the very least, lacks -- definition, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to OMMA Native programming chief Steve Smith. During his warm-up act for this morning’s show in New York City, Smith  tallied the number of variants on the native theme that he’s been pitched to write about in the past year that all fall under the pitchers’ banner of “native”  -- everything from  “integration,” “custom builds,” “leveraging social channels,” and even “app load ads.”

While that obviously shows that native is hot, it also means a lot of people are scratching their heads over what it is -- exactly. As much as that lack of definition causes problems  -- not just for trade editors -- it’s actually a “very good thing,” according to Smith., suggesting it may be breeding a new frontier of open creativity.