No mat­ter what you call it – spon­sored con­tent, native adver­tis­ing or brand jour­nal­ism – it is, at the least, a com­plex con­tent hybrid that rais­es ques­tions about where jour­nal­ism ends and adver­tis­ing begins. In the­o­ry, it’s a form of con­tent that can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ben­e­fit brands, news orga­ni­za­tions, and con­sumers. But that’s when it’s done right. So what does that mean?

Pan­elists at the recent Ad Age con­fer­ence sat down to dis­cuss native adver­tis­ing in all its com­plex glo­ry, as well as what mar­keters need to know to har­ness it suc­cess­ful­ly.

“I hate the term ‘native adver­tis­ing.’ I would like it to evolve,” said Stephanie Losee, man­ag­ing edi­tor at Dell. “I’m con­fused when I see spon­sored con­tent ver­sus spon­sor-gen­er­at­ed con­tent. Some­times it means the oppo­site and if I’m con­fused, I can’t imag­ine what con­sumers are feel­ing.”

And that’s com­ing from one of the New York Times’ inau­gur­al native adver­tis­ing part­ners, which has worked with the Times to cre­ate spon­sored con­tent like this.

“It was a pret­ty dicey first engage­ment,” Losee said, cit­ing head­lines she wor­ried about like, “Dell brings down the Grey Lady.”

But “it went well,” she said.

We made care­ful, mod­est choic­es and tried to not be too flashy and did our con­tent as a ser­vice,” Losee said. “We com­mis­sioned jour­nal­ists to do good work, but on the busi­ness side.”

For his part, Jon Stein­berg, CEO of the Dai­ly Mail North Amer­i­ca, who goes as far as say­ing he invent­ed native adver­tis­ing at scale when he was at Buz­zFeed, adds that native adver­tis­ing is “just Inter­net adver­tis­ing that got more cre­ative and evolved. [And] just viewed through the lens of adver­tis­ing, it’s less con­tro­ver­sial.”

Why Dell Likes Native Advertising

By writ­ing arti­cles and mak­ing videos, Dell is try­ing to deep­en its rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers via social media.

“Our point of view is when Dell is a pub­lish­er, Dell is com­mis­sion­ing arti­cles and mul­ti­me­dia con­tent about thought lead­er­ship on top­ics the audi­ence cares about, like cloud com­put­ing, big data and the future of work,” Losee said. “It’s con­tent as a ser­vice to our cus­tomers or poten­tial cus­tomers.”

In turn, Dell forges bet­ter rela­tion­ships with those cus­tomers than it would oth­er­wise.

“70 per­cent of the cus­tomer jour­ney is con­duct­ed on Google now, so each of those pieces is like one rain­drop fill­ing the bar­rel of things they bump into out in the wild of the Inter­net before they get in con­tact with the brand,” Losee said.

And despite some lin­ger­ing con­fu­sion about what exact­ly native adver­tis­ing is, Losee and her fel­low pan­elists agree anoth­er advan­tage is that brand jour­nal­ism can some­times result in bet­ter con­tent because brand spon­sors have deep­er pock­ets than news orga­ni­za­tions.

“Buz­zFeed does some of the best things I’ve ever seen,” Losee said. “They use the brand bud­get to make some­thing fab­u­lous. If you’re going to use a big bud­get to cre­ate some­thing a mag­a­zine or news­pa­per doesn’t have the bud­get to do and I want to click on it, then, yeah.”

What Does the Future Hold?

Thanks in part to these ben­e­fits, the pan­elists only expect to see more native con­tent.

In fact, accord­ing to Brent Poer, pres­i­dent of Liq­uidThread, the brand con­tent arm of Star­com Medi­avest Group, retail con­tent is going to be a big push.

“It’s about how brands change the shop­ping expe­ri­ence on that last inch to pur­chase,” he said.

Shane Snow, chief cre­ative offi­cer at con­tent mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny Con­tent­ly, said to expect “a lot more fea­ture films and TV shows and high-qual­i­ty video con­tent like ‘The Lego Movie’,” which he calls “the best piece of brand­ed con­tent ever.”

For his part, Stein­berg said Snapchat Dis­cov­er is “way big­ger than any­one rec­og­nizes” and “brands and agen­cies are slow to buy because the data isn’t there,” but “it’s going to be huge, as big as Twit­ter.”

And, final­ly, Losee said, “I think the dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el will blow up even more. Now the New York Times is cre­at­ing pieces that will live on brand sites.”

But no mat­ter where it goes in the future, what are these experts’ best tips on cre­at­ing native con­tent?

1. Don’t Be Evil

Make it clear that it is spon­sored con­tent.

“I dare you to look at the things we’re pub­lish­ing and say they’re not jour­nal­ism,” Losee said. “It’s not sup­posed to be brand inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. That’s messed up.”

Brands must “stay on the right side of good ver­sus evil,” she added. “It’s not brand-pull-a-fast-one jour­nal­ism.”

The lat­ter can only result in burn­ing bridges with con­sumers, which defeats the entire pur­pose, she said.

Fur­ther, Snow said, “If the con­sumer doesn’t know it came from you, it’s worth­less.”

2. Make It Good

And, accord­ing to Poer, as long as brands and news orga­ni­za­tions are deliv­er­ing con­tent of val­ue, “The con­sumer is blind to whether it is brand-spon­sored or brand-cre­at­ed.”

But first brands must “deliv­er some­thing [con­sumers] enjoy, which means you have to work hard­er at under­stand­ing who the con­sumer is and get­ting insights,” he said. “You have to build some­thing they want to engage with. Oth­er­wise, it’s just noise.”

And to Losee’s ear­li­er point, good con­tent is con­tent con­sumers will nat­u­ral­ly want to con­sume.

“I hate the term ‘brand jour­nal­ism,’” Snow said. “There’s still a lot of con­sumer con­fu­sion, so you have to make it so good that peo­ple don’t care where it comes from. It’s about mak­ing it clear so every­one wins.”

3. Find The Right Partners

Accord­ing to Poer, when brands enter the native adver­tis­ing are­na for the first time, they are try­ing to fig­ure out their voic­es and tone, so they need to learn along with the right part­ners to find out what works for them.

4. Beware The Influencers

Influ­encers are huge and can dri­ve sales, but, Poer not­ed, it’s a space that can be hard to nav­i­gate because of tal­ent issues and “new media divas.”

In addi­tion, brands must also be will­ing to relin­quish some con­trol and “let your hands go off of it” when they work with influ­encers.

5. Know The Regulations

Poer also said there are reg­u­la­to­ry issues tied to native con­tent, so brands must make sure they know what they are doing and that they under­stand the impli­ca­tions of their actions and what poten­tial con­se­quences can arise if they vio­late FTC reg­u­la­tions.

6. Agencies In Particular Should Take Note

The Dai­ly Mail is in the native adver­tis­ing busi­ness because, accord­ing to Stein­berg, “cre­ative agen­cies don’t want to do it. I keep wait­ing for cre­ative agen­cies to start want­i­ng to do some­thing oth­er than 30-sec­ond TV. That’s why you have upstarts like Liq­uidThread and us doing con­tent efforts because ulti­mate­ly media agen­cies decide what gets done. I think it’s a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty for cre­ative agen­cies.”

Losee agrees Dell is eager to work with part­ners.

“I can tes­ti­fy – we don’t want to do our­selves. We don’t want to build a pub­lish­ing oper­a­tion,” she said. “We want to hire a few edi­tors and then we want to use Con­tent­ly and Group SJR and we’re lean­ing pret­ty hard on pub­lish­er side. Brands want these enti­ties to hold their hands and do it right for them because they’re not built for this and if we can rely on agen­cies and can be more nimble…if we staff up, then we’re com­mit­ted and what if we made the wrong choic­es? We want oth­er peo­ple to cre­ate the capac­i­ty for us and then we’re able to piv­ot in the space.”

Do you agree with Del­l’s take on native adver­tis­ing?