When we talk about native advertising, we’re talking about the kind of ads that take the form of content that users might expect to see on the site anyway. This can come in the form of videos, images, articles, tweets, status updates or other media, but all in all, it’s a trend that is rising quickly. Even as the trend is clearly pointing upward, some are concerned about what this means for the future of content and paid messaging, as a new eMarketer report indicates.

Do you think native advertising is a good direction for online ads to be trending in? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments.

For a better understanding of native advertising, take a look at this infographic Solve Media put out a few months ago (via Mashable), attempting to explain it:

Despite those trying to draw lines between adverotirals and native advertising, Google pretty much sees them as going hand in hand. This makes sense, because either way, it’s a message that is being paid for, and if it’s being paid for, and it’s passing PageRank, that is a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and will get you penalized.

In fact, while this is already something Google has frowned upon, the company has recently indicated that it will be cracking down on this more, so beware of that.

We recently looked at a video from Google’s Matt Cutts in which he ran down a lot of the changes Google is planning on making in the coming months, and he specifically talked about advertorials and native advertising during part of it. Here’s the video again, in case you missed it:

“We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” he said. “That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

“There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he added.

So, even as we see more and more of this kind of advertising saturating the web, webmasters better make sure they’re not also saturating Google’s index, because the search giant will not be shy about holding your site accountable, and that could have the opposite effect from the one you intended with the advertorial in the first place. Good luck finding advertisers when your site can’t be found in Google.

Beyond Google, as mentioned, others are also concerned about the native advertising trend.

“Although business prospects for native advertising are positive, the medium has its detractors,” says eMarketer. “Some media executives and marketers are wary of the blurring of lines between content and advertising that occurs with native ads, particularly in the context of news sites. Others question the return on investment of these ads, arguing that native ads cannot scale for multiple placements.”

They point to recent research from MediaBrix, which found that a high percentage of U.S. Internet users find ads that appear as content misleading:

“Despite the potential backlash against misunderstood native ads, media sites under monetization pressure are turning to native advertising to drive digital revenue,” says eMarketer. “Notable examples include Forbes, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Others such as CNN and Hearst have said they are considering it.”

You can find eMarketer’s report here.

Are you concerned about native ads, or is this the future of online marketing? Let us know in the comments.

These particular webinars deal with Google+ and Enhanced Campaigns and campaign management and strategies for upgrading. They combine for about 90 minutes of information.

Earlier this week, Google revealed that about two million AdWords campaigns have been set to enhanced, up from 1.5 last month, when Google held its Q1 earnings call.

If you haven’t made the transition yet, you might want to check out this tutorial on the Enhanced Campaigns Upgrade Center.

All campaigns will be upgraded automatically on July 22nd.

In a blog post from Thursday, Mozilla’s Brendan Eich said that Mozilla has delayed the implementation of its new anti-cookie patch in Firefox so that it can test for false positives and false negatives. As you may know, the new anti-cookie policy is meant to block third party cookies from sites you haven’t visited while leaving cookies from previously visited sites intact. Eich says that fales positives and false negatives may get in the way of how this policy is meant to work:

False positives. For example, say you visit a site named foo.com, which embeds cookie-setting content from a site named foocdn.com. With the patch, Firefox sets cookies from foo.com because you visited it, yet blocks cookies from foocdn.com because you never visited foocdn.com directly, even though there is actually just one company behind both sites.

False negatives. Meanwhile, in the other direction, just because you visit a site once does not mean you are ok with it tracking you all over the Internet on unrelated sites, forever more. Suppose you click on an ad by accident, for example. Or a site you trust directly starts setting third-party cookies you do not want.

The anti-cookie patch will be turned off by default in the Firefox 22 beta will Mozilla works on these issues. Users on the beta will be able to turn on the patch, however, and mess around with the settings. Mozilla, of course, encourages feedback as it works on it. Those who are using the Aurora release will find that the anti-cookie patch is turned on by default however.

In the end, Eich says that Mozilla’s work on the patch doesn’t represent any change to its previous anti-cookie philosophy:

We have heard important feedback from concerned site owners. We are always committed to user privacy, and remain committed to shipping a version of the patch that is “on” by default. We are mindful that this is an important change; we always knew it would take a little longer than most patches as we put it through its paces.

For those who read this as Mozilla softening our stance on protecting privacy and putting users first, in a word: no. False positives break sites that users intentionally visit. (Fortunately, we haven’t seen too many such problems, but greater testing scale is needed.) False negatives enable tracking where it is not wanted. The patch as-is needs more work.

[h/t: PC World]

The new AdMob includes smarter app promotion features. “Conversion Optimizer helps many AdWords advertisers increase conversions while decreasing cost per acquisition,” explains AdMob product manager Vishay Nihalani. “We’re now bringing Conversion Optimizer to app developers using AdMob to promote their apps, so they can get the best possible number of installs for their budget. Choose a target cost per acquisition for each download, and Conversion Optimizer will show ads when they are most likely to lead to an install.”

“Ensuring that your app is showing quality, relevant ads is important for app developers,” says Nihalani. “Now, developers will have more control over which ads appear in their apps, by blocking sensitive categories, so they can increase relevancy and protect their brand.”

Additionally, AdMob Mediation has a new simplified setup, and there’s new local currency payments.

Finally, there’s a new reporting interface that lets developers slice data in a variety of ways, and has multi-dimensional reports, which can be broken down over time by app, ad unit, platform, country, bid type, etc.

The new AdMob is rolling out to developers starting today. It will be available to all developers globally within the coming months.

In the letter, Google explains, “It appears that the application: (1) allows users to download videos from YouTube; (2) prevents the display of advertisements in YouTube video playbacks; and (3) plays videos that our partners have restricted from playback on certain platforms (e.g. mobile devices with limited feature sets). These features directly harm our content creators and clearly violate our Terms of Service.”

Here’s the letter in its entirety (via The Verge):

Microsoft has responded to the situation. The Verge quotes a spokesperson as saying: “We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.”

You can hear Page’s comments near the end of the Google I/O keynote here.

Google has so far given Microsoft until May 22nd to remove the app. It launched last week.

For one, the company announced on its Inside AdSense blog that it has added dome new features to AdSense to provide users with more detailed segmentation of traffic in their reports.

“The Countries report shows your performance broken down by the country of users who engaged with the ads on your pages,” says AdSense product manager Matt Goodridge. “In addition to viewing a country breakdown for reports by ad type, bid type, and targeting type, you’ll now also be able to see a Countries report when viewing the reporting dimensions URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit. This will allow you to segment your traffic further and get a better understanding of your account performance in different locations.”

“In order to help you get more granular insights into your performance on a site level, we’re introducing a new reporting type for Owned sites,” says Goodridge. “‘Owned’ sites are all sites specified as owned in the site management feature, and the new reporting dimension for Owned sites will be a subset of the Sites report. In contrast to the Sites report, however, you’ll be able to combine the Owned sites report with the Countries report. This will allow you to segment your traffic in more detail and understand the performance of your sites across different countries.”

Country breakdown of reports by URL channel, custom channel and ad unit will only be available for reports with date ranges starting March 9th and later. Historical data in Owned sites reports will be available from the date that a site was added or claimed as “owned”. Users will only be able to view country data breakdowns for Owned sites for reports with date ranges starting March 22 or later.

All they had to do was apply transparent glue to a designated section of the billboard, so that any bugs caught on it would appear to be trapped in the bug spray’s path. After a few days, nearly 230,000 insects gave their lives for the sake of advertising. Or, as Publicis Italy calls it, preventing 230,000 insects from bothering anyone else.

Cool? Imaginative? Disgusting? Yes, yes, and yes.

[h/t PSFK]

The ad, which has since been set to private on YouTube, said, “It’s no secret, recently JCPenney changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn’t, but what matters with mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we’d love to see you.”

Now, they’re out with a new ad. Instead of “I’m Sorry,” the message this time is, “Thank you.” In fact, the title of the video is simply, “Thank You”.

“At JC Penney, we never stop being amazed by you,” the ad says. “How you work so hard without looking like you do, how you make every dollar stretch so far, and keep your family so close, so we brought back the things you liked about JC Penney, gave you new things to explore, and now, we’re happy to say, you’ve come back to us. We’re speechless, except for two little words.”

They’re still promoting the hashtag #jcpListens. You can see how they’ve been working social media here.

Reddit has unearthed a new one where the weather segment begins after a Depends commercial featuring former NFL defensive tackle Tony Siragusa talking about “guarding your manhood”. Needless to say, the weather guy found the commercial amusing:

[via reddit]

In an interview with AdExchanger, Jonathan Mayer, privacy advocate and Mozilla’s cookie policy maestro, says that the current Do Not Track negotiations forced his hand in writing the anti-cookie policy. Those negotiations, which were previously reported as being in danger of breaking down, see both sides not being able to agree on what Do Not Track means. Mayer indicates that it’s worse than that as both sides are refusing to negotiate:

The advertising side would be expected to reevaluate their hardline “We’re not going to negotiate” stance and rethink their strategy. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. So I’m not too optimistic on negotiated terms for Do Not Track, but I’m increasingly optimistic that by virtue of the browsers’ efforts, consumers will get the choices they want. It looks like consumers will get some pretty good privacy in the near term. If the W3C’s process is unsuccessful in developing a consensus on what the standards are, companies could be in a difficult spot, but consumers may be okay because of the technical countermeasures that are starting to be drawn over browsers.

In other words, Mayer is saying that it’s up to the browsers to give consumers the choice that privacy advocates are fighting for in the “Do Not Track” negotiations. Of course, that choice comes in the form of either “Do Not Track” being turned on by default in Internet Explorer 10, or Firefox outright blocking all third-party cookies. Advertisers don’t take well to either of those scenarios, but are apparently unwilling to negotiate for more favorable terms.

What would happen if the advertisers were to give in then? What system would Mayer want put into place? He’s still all for third-party cookies being blocked as the default option, but he also calls upon advertisers to prove to consumers that they’re trustworthy:

Consumers don’t have a great handle on what’s going on in terms of how their data is being collected and what it is being used for. Therefore it makes sense to shift the burden of explaining to the user what is going on to those who are in the best position to do it. Advertising companies have an incentive to convince users that they’re trustworthy and that users should allow them to collect data.

By setting those default settings to Do Not Track, we give interested parties the incentive to educate consumers about the impacts of those choices. We allocate to them [those parties] the responsibility of getting consumers to give them access.

It’s unlikely that the advertising lobby will give in though. Some even fear that Web sites will begin blocking browsers that block cookies. Some sites already block browsers with AdBlock software installed so it’s not much of a stretch to see some advertisers going the extra mile.

It would be truly unfortunate if it were to reach that point. As always, advertisers have a right to the Internet just as much as anybody else does, but they should be held to a consumer friendly standard. Maybe it’s time they started paying more attention to the “acceptable ad” idea.

[h/t: Business Insider]