Writing in Fast Company, Joe Lazauskas, editor-in-chief of Contently, says native advertising is broken -- that study findings reveal 54% of consumers have felt deceived by native advertising. The study, of 1,212 adults who regularly access the Internet, was conducted by Contently and the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York, and found:
--The majority (77%) of those polled didn't interpret native ads as advertising.
--Almost half (44%) weren't able to correctly identify the sponsor of the native ad they read.
--And about the same percentage (43%) lose trust in a publisher when it features native advertising from an untrustworthy brand. It wasn't clear what constitutes "untrustworthy."
It's been one year since the Federal Trade Commission released its recommended guidelines on native advertising.