Whenever you enter a website, no matter what it is, there are advertisements all over the page. In the age of new media, advertising via the Internet has become the most effective way to reach many potential consumers in a short period of time. With the most common method of ads on the web, being banner ads, popular opinion believes that content now has to be sponsored.
Joe McCambley created the first banner ad in 1994 and at the time, it was revolutionary because nothing like that was done before. Since then, billions of annoying, clickable icons have been used to lure in potential customers. Nearly twenty years have passed and a new fad called native advertising has begun to take shape. David Carr, of the New York Times (not the football player), calls these storytelling ads. At first glance, it sounds horrible because "storytelling" leads one to think it would take time to get a point across.
Basically, native advertising is a method where a company sponsors a page based on the relevancy of the article to their business and the readers who will read the content. Unlike the banner ads, these advertisments sometimes fill up the background of the page and there's no avoiding it. But when is it too much?
McCambley tells Carr "Native advertising can provide value to both reader and advertiser when properly executed" but is wary that it is too much for the viewers and is "doing damage to the contract between consumer and media organizations." In short, it doesn't sound good, especially when an innovator of online journalistic advertising says so.
How does this affect journalism and doesn't it seem exaggerated that a silly thing like sponsored contect could destroy it? As unfortunate as it sounds, money runs everything these days, and for businesses and companies, that determines whether it will float or it will sink. Without money from advertisers, the webpage, company, or paper doesn't have enough to support the project. Without the webpage, company or paper, there are no jobs, specifically for the journalists.
That's why papers like The New Yorker has decided to experiment with sponsored content. In a world where everything is constantly changing, you'll have to adjust or be left behind. Soon, banner ads will become irrelevant and poor Mr. McCambley will see his innovation go by the wayside. But if that's what is necessary for online journalism to survive, I'm sure he would pay that price.