Group items tagged

"This is the first part of a four-part series on native advertising. Part 2: "Publishers become content producers." Part 3: "How ethical is native advertising?" Part 4: "Future of native advertising""

"The Associated Press is planning to introduce sponsored articles into the stream of news stories on its mobile apps and hosted websites. The rollout is expected in early 2014, with potential sponsorship deals centered around major events the AP is planning to cover, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards. Several potential advertisers have been in talks with the AP, according to Jim Kennedy, senior VP-digital strategy and products at the AP, who declined to identify them. The move to sponsored content is part of a broader effort to open a new line of revenue at the AP, where just 2% of total revenue comes from advertising,

"In the United States, the newspaper digital audience is skyrocketing, reaching 176 million unique visitors across all platforms in March (comScore, 2015). Circulation revenue is also rising, both in the United States and around the world. According to the 2015 World Press Trends Survey, global newspaper circulation revenue exceeded advertising revenue for the first time ever. The reason? Newspapers are leveraging technology and audience data more than ever to create new content, products and services that attract audiences and advertisers. The appetite for quality content and information is insatiable, and over the last few years, we have transformed into an industry that adopts and utilizes the latest developments in social, mobile, print and video to better reach consumers with interesting and engaging content. Let's look at a few of the ways the news industry has evolved:"

"The line between news and advertising is going, going . . . As newspapers and broadcast stations scramble for new sources of advertising dollars, are old ethical standards getting lost in the shuffle?"

"The quality and scalability of native advertising means it is filling the gap between brand publishing and banner adverts"

Section of native advertising articles

"After six years of affiliating his popular blog with major media companies Time, The Atlantic and most recently the Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan announced he's returning to independence. As of Feb. 1, the blog will live at andrewsullivan.com without any ads, sponsors or investment backing. Just Sullivan and a couple of colleagues blogging - and hopefully, readers paying. Sullivan is asking for $19.99 a year to subscribe ("around a nickel a day"). Sullivan calls it "the purest, simplest model for online journalism: you, us, and a meter. Period. No corporate ownership, no advertising demands, no pressure for pageviews … just a concept designed to make your reading experience as good as possible, and to lead us not into temptation." The metered model, to be administered by TinyPass, allows a yet-unspecified number of free reads per month, with exemptions for any visitor following a link from another blog. "No blogger or writer need ever worry that a link to us will push their readers into a paywall," Sullivan writes. He hopes this will pave the way for other writers:"

Among the major sectors, only newspapers suffered continued revenue declines last year-an unmistakable sign that the structural economic problems facing newspapers are more severe than those of other media. When the final tallies are in, we estimate 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost-meaning newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than in 2000. Beneath all this, however, a more fundamental challenge to journalism became clearer in the last year. The biggest issue ahead may not be lack of audience or even lack of new revenue experiments. It may be that in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own future. News organizations-old and new-still produce most of the content audiences consume. But each technological advance has added a new layer of complexity-and a new set of players-in connecting that content to consumers and advertisers. In the digital space, the organizations that produce the news increasingly rely on independent networks to sell their ads. They depend on aggregators (such as Google) and social networks (such as Facebook) to bring them a substantial portion of their audience. And now, as news consumption becomes more mobile, news companies must follow the rules of device makers (such as Apple) and software developers (Google again) to deliver their content. Each new platform often requires a new software program. And the new players take a share of the revenue and in many cases also control the audience data.

This story is about how Facebook's immense popularity is making it become its own new type of journalism.