Many media consumers do not recognize paid content as such
Advertising content disguised as editorial content is often not recognized as sponsored content, even when labeled as such: In an online experiment, just over a third (35 percent) of participants did not recognize the surreptitious advertising as such.
"Depending on the platform and the type of labeling, as many as 60 percent of participants did not notice that a post was sponsored content," said media scientist Guido Keel of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW, according to a statement Wednesday.
He and his team studied a sample of 1,800 people from German- and French-speaking Switzerland to determine how and whether they recognized so-called native ads while reading them. The study was co-financed by the Federal Office of Communications Bakom.
With native ads, advertisers gain a new way to capture the attention of the audience, especially because the content placed in this way is not heavy-handedly commercial, but journalistic. According to the ZHAW, recognizing such content would be important for the transparency and independence of journalism.
The study participants were most likely to recognize such native ads if a reference was placed at the end of the article. Almost as important for detection is how a topic is reported on, the researchers write, for example if a product is described "disproportionately intensively or positively."
Incomprehensible designations
Surprisingly, the study showed that participants who had perceived a contribution as paid did not necessarily rate the information content and credibility of the content lower than the comparison group from whom the reference to sponsorship was withheld. On the contrary, in individual cases they even rated the sponsored articles as more informative and credible.
The survey also revealed that the specific labeling of sponsored content was often not understood: Half of the participants did not understand what "native content" was supposed to mean, and twenty percent were unable to correctly classify terms such as "paid post," "sponsored" or "advertisement. Between five and ten percent of respondents also assumed that the author had no influence on the content.
The researchers also recorded the eyes of a small sample of the study group while they were reading native ads. The result of this so-called eye tracking with 24 young media users: The reference to the sponsorship was hardly noticed. If it was not part of the running text, it was unconsciously and routinely ignored. And: "Even participants who looked at the sponsorship reference could not remember seeing a reference in the subsequent survey," says Keel. (SDA)
