As more and more news websites are made available to us, we can just stay home and know everything that is going on in the world. Timely information is also made available to us since news websites are consistently updating. However, while we read news online, we have to be aware of the credibility of the articles. Especially, be aware of who the author of the articles really is. Native advertising is a form of advertising used in news like articles. they are usually sponsored by companies for its own interest. To be more specific, when we see a news like article on a news website, it could actually be an advertisement article written by a company.

For example, Huffington Post is one of the news websites that employs native advertising. Link When most of us go on Huffington Post’s website, we expect to read news articles written by professional journalists. However, the article linked above was actually written by Netflix for its Thanksgiving promotion. If we did not pay attention to the “Presented by Netflix” above the article title, we could take it as an article written by journalist. There is definitely a difference between a news article and an advertisement because advertisement are usually biased by the interest of the sponsored companies.

Since native advertising can be easily confused with news article on a news website for readers, native advertising should be made more recognizable from news articles. As readers, we have to be aware of the existence of native advertising, so that we do not get “fooled” by companies’ advertisement. What do you think? Should there be regulations in place to separate native advertising articles from news articles?