• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 25, 2014

These days, for better or worse, few news publishers are without an aggressive native advertising strategy.

Pursuing its own native path, TheStreet, Inc. has enlisted Polar’s MediaVoice ad platform to put forth a new sponsored content offering named BrandView.

An independent publisher of financial news and analysis, TheStreet’s properties include TheStreet, RealMoney, RealMoney Pro, Stockpickr, Action Alerts PLUS, Options Profits, MainStreet and RateWatch.

With BrandView, brand partners can now run their own “content” directly on the home page of these properties, as well as on article and index pages.

Patrick Dignan, vice president of advertising sales for TheStreet, insisted that the strategy does not compromise the publisher’s editorial integrity.  

“We respect the lines between advertising and editorial,” Dignan said Wednesday. “In our native environment, we clearly badge everything as native content so that we’re transparent with our audience."

TheStreet has established a set of tiered options for advertisers, including “Basic,” “Custom” and “Custom Video.”

Each tier includes various ad-creation opportunities from advertiser-created articles, stories created by TheStreet staff itself, use of TheStreet’s HD studios to record and produce videos, and even the ability to conduct and release original research in partnership with TheStreet.

The offerings are all standard for MediaVoice, which Toronto-based Polar launched last year. Top Canadian newspapers including The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Financial Post were first to adopt the service.Then, in a big win for Polar, the Associated Press signed up for the service, late last year.

Polar is competing against a number of native ad platforms. Late last year, for instance, Nativo -- a start-up that helps publishers scale native advertising by automating the process of formatting and distributing the ads across various devices -- signed deals with over 1,500 publishers, including McClatchy, the USA Today Sports Media Group and Reader’s Digest.

Last November, Time Inc. increased its native ad offerings through an expanded partnership with Sharethrough. And last September, The Dallas Morning News introduced native ads for its digital channels through Speakeasy, a social content marketing company formed as a joint venture between the newspaper and Slingshot LLC.

Regardless of what its critics and consumers think, native advertising is now firmly entrenched in the highest echelons of news media. That said, publishers would be wise to steer clear of less respected brand partners, according to recent research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edelman Berland.

For advertisers, it’s critical that native ad messages be highly relevant to audiences. Indeed, the IAB and Edelman found that relevancy (90%) is the top factor in sparking interest in in-feed sponsored content.

For native adverting to work, it’s critical that “consumers’ viewpoints are taken into account,” Sherrill Mane, senior vice president of research, analytics and measurement at the IAB, said in July. “News publishers get greater impact when they work with familiar and trusted brands.”

Brand familiarity and trust (81%), as well as subject matter expertise (82%), were all identified as key to driving news-reading consumers’ interest in sponsored content.

Preconceived views about a publisher also need to be considered. In fact, research showed that a positive view of a news site’s credibility can significantly impact readers’ feelings about sponsored content -- driving a 33% spike in perceived credibility of an ad’s content.