Barry Levine, from MarketingLand, says, “Native ads can be very effective in attracting reader attention because their content relates to the surrounding editorial content, and their visual style helps them blend in.

But a new study, out today, finds that most of them blend in too much, possibly tricking readers into thinking they’re not ads.

The Online Trust Alliance (OTA)’s Native Advertising Assessment looked at the 100 top news websites by unique monthly visitors, of which 69 percent had one or more native ads on their home pages. The sites included such major publishers as ABC News, About.com, Business Insider, Fortune, Discovery, The Los Angeles Times, Mic, The New York Times and PBS. OTA said that, to its knowledge, this is the first study of its kind.

Of those 69 sites, only nine percent received top trust scores for clearly distinguishing native ads as ads. Twenty percent were deemed as “in need of improvement,” and a whopping 71 percent received failing grades”.

Report: Nearly three-quarters of native ads get failing scores

Marketing Land

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