Native Advertising Blurs Line Between News and Promotion, BU Expert Warns

Turn on the TV or scroll through social media, and you’ll likely recognize most advertisements. But a deceptive marketing practice called native advertising is increasingly blurring the line between legitimate news and paid content, leaving millions of readers confused about what they’re consuming.

Michelle Amazeen, an associate professor at Boston University’s College of Communication and core faculty member at BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability, has documented this troubling trend in her new book, “Content Confusion: News Media, Native Advertising, and Policy in an Era of Disinformation.”

“Time after time, the vast majority of people in our experiments, when we exposed them to these native ads with these disclosures, they think it’s news that they’re looking at,” Amazeen explained during a recent book discussion event hosted by the Institute for Global Sustainability.

The December 4 event featured a conversation between Amazeen and Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times and current distinguished professor at Northeastern University’s Burnes Center for Social Change.

Amazeen’s research reveals a startling statistic: only about 9% of people can correctly identify native advertisements as paid content. These ads are deliberately designed to mimic the look and feel of legitimate news articles, often appearing on the same platforms as factual reporting.

“The digital world really changed what used to be a very tall, strong wall between news and ads,” Abramson noted during the discussion.

Corporate Influence and Climate Misinformation

In one prominent example highlighted in Amazeen’s book, The New York Times ran a native ad for ExxonMobil in 2018 that touted the company’s sustainability efforts. Despite a small “PAID POST” banner at the top, Amazeen’s research showed that most readers failed to recognize it as advertising.

ExxonMobil reportedly paid $5 million for the project, which was later cited by the state of Massachusetts as evidence of “false and misleading” communications by the oil giant.

“For ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry, their motivation is to borrow the halo of credibility that these news outlets lend,” Amazeen said.

The practice creates a particularly problematic dynamic when it comes to climate change reporting. Major fossil fuel companies can use native ads to shape public perception about their environmental initiatives, potentially undermining factual climate reporting at the same publication.

Damage to Journalism and Reader Trust

The consequences of native advertising extend beyond reader confusion. Amazeen’s research shows that exposure to native ads from a news outlet reduces readers’ trust in that outlet’s unsponsored reporting.

Even more concerning, her analysis revealed that media organizations are often less likely to report critically on corporations that pay them to run native ads — creating a conflict of interest that undermines independent journalism.

“I talk about in the book how this practice is demoralizing to many journalists,” Amazeen explained. “Some of them are afraid to report on advertisers because they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.”

Solutions and Recommendations

Amazeen and Abramson outlined several potential solutions to address the proliferation of native advertising:

Clearer and consistent labeling would help readers identify sponsored content. Currently, native ads might be marked with various terms like “paid post,” “sponsored content,” or “partner content.” Requiring all advertisements to be clearly labeled as “advertisement” would reduce confusion.

Media outlets could also limit native advertising to entertainment topics rather than news, or refuse ads from industries with documented histories of spreading misinformation, particularly on climate issues.

Amazeen acknowledged the financial challenges news organizations face, noting that The New York Times has successfully diversified its revenue streams beyond advertising through digital subscriptions to its news, games, and cooking content.

“Their business model relies on reader revenue,” Amazeen said. “That’s why they’ve added all these products, because not only news junkies may become digital subscribers, but gamers, or cooks, so that’s been a very successful strategy.”

She also emphasized the importance of media literacy education to help consumers critically evaluate the sources of information they encounter.

Amazeen’s work is part of the broader BU Climate Disinformation Initiative, an interdisciplinary research effort studying the nature, spread, and impact of climate misinformation. The team continues to publish research on this topic in journals including The International Journal of Press/Politics and npj Climate Action.