What do publishers need before jumping into native advertising (without sending readers running)? Firstly, the ability to create truly “great” branded content, Andrew Gorenstein, CRO of
Gawker Media, told attendees of OMMA Native on Tuesday afternoon. To make sure of that, Gorenstein said Gawker “invested heavily” to create its own production studio. Addressing the other
side of the quality spectrum, Gorenstein said: “It won’t work if you’re just [publishing] some 500-word piece of marketing boilerplate.” Christine Osekoski, Publisher of Fast
Company couldn’t agree more. “They’ll call ‘bullshit’ right away,” she said of readers and their attitudes toward thoughtless native ads. For that reason, “We
won’t [publish] some car company’s press release.” Great or not, the problem with native is that it doesn’t scale very easily, noted M. Scott Havens, President of The Atlantic.
As such, native is “Certainly not a silver bullet.” That issue, however, didn’t keep The Atlantic from “pivoted hard toward native,” Havens said. Partly driving the
trend, Havens added, is that fact that “brands are creating more content.”