Readers of Oil & Gas Journal in any of its formats-print-digital monthly, digital weekly, or daily, weekly, or monthly e-newsletters-know what to expect: news of oil and gas operations that is factual and technology articles (monthly print-digital) that are factual, technically detailed, and readable by a wide range of readers.
What readers don't expect, want, or receive-ever-is information that is compromised by bias. I'm talking about the kind of bias that influences which stories or companies or technologies are covered. Simply put: OGJ articles, regardless of what format delivers them, do not promote anyone or anything except the truth as the facts reveal it.
In general, articles inform; advertisements promote. Articles that promote don't belong or appear in OGJ; ads that inform are still first and foremost ads, trying to get someone's money. There's a reason each occupies its own space.
Now that that's clear, whuzzup? What's up is something called "native advertising."
Whuzzat?
The term, "native advertising," has been buzzing around the commercial media world for the last couple of years or so, especially digital media-and what medium isn't digital if it expects to stay, well, around? But the term has special relevance to how a trade publication, such as Oil & Gas Journal, operates; more on that shortly.
Earlier this year, a story on the US public radio program Marketplace asked, "Did you realize the article you're looking at in your favorite magazine might actually be paid advertising?" Turns out some publications in the Conde Nast stable have begun deploying "magazine editors and digital video staffers to shape some of the paid ads in its print and digital editions."
The trend, especially hot through 2013-14, so troubled the US Federal Trade Commission that it convened a workshop in December 2013 to determine whether and how to regulate promotionality that pretends not to be promotional. (No word yet on any new regulations.)
Just before the workshop, and no doubt smelling new federal regulations in the air, industry association Interactive Advertising Bureau published a preemptive set of guidelines for its members. With its Native Advertising Task Force, it later released the "IAB Native Advertising Playbook," intended to guide the industry in thinking about and discussing native advertising.
But what does the term mean and how do we recognize the practice? Do stories from the Conde Nast editors and staffers carry the customary label "Paid advertisement"? The Marketplace story implies they do not. In fact, that's the point: The reader isn't supposed to know-or at least recognize immediately-that information in an article or a video is part of a marketing effort with content paid for and supplied by a vendor.
I suspect that at least one manifestation of the practice consists of those irritating hot links attached to such innocuous words or phrases as "processing" or "drill bit" or "catalytic reforming." As you inadvertently run your mouse pointer over one, up pops a vendor's name and contact information. So dense are some online articles with these things, reading the article is almost impossible.
Old dance; new dress
To a veteran OGJ editor, however, native advertising-at least as the Marketplace story explains the practice-smacks strongly of the tried and tired trade publishing practice known as "advertorials." And in fact at least one member the advertising industry, Deep Focus chief executive officer Ian Schafer said in 2012 he believed that's exactly what native advertising is-advertorials (mashable.com/2012/09/25/native-advertising/).
That's when an article has the superficial look, feel, and tone of an objective, evaluative technical article, but closer reading reveals it to be an advertisement in article guise. Somewhere else in the publication or in another issue of the publication or on the publication's web site-or all three-appears one or more traditional display ads for the same tool, process, or whatever.
Which brings me back to Oil & Gas Journal: It does not publish advertorials, period. And so far as adopting "native advertising" practices is concerned, it's just not OGJ style.
