Dive Brief:
- Native ads are about to become harder to avoid on Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News properties with ads now being served up in the comment sections of articles.
- Comment platform Livefyre will allow publishers to serve display or sponsored social posts in comment sections.
- Recently the IAB revisited its recommendations for in-feed ads, saying they should provide viewers with visual cues so they understand they are viewing an ad.
Dive Insight:
Marketers have a new option for serving online ads – the comment section. The ads appear via the Livefyre comment platform and offer publishers two ad options with display ads or sponsored social posts. Livefyre’s competitor Disqus began offering ad promos last year, but Livefyre’s offering is different in that publishers directly sell the ads.
In a Livefyre blog post, Jordan Kretchmer, wrote, “Starting today, Livefyre enterprise customers can now integrate ads directly into their comments streams. It’s a totally optional add-on, but for those customers who choose to launch ads, it will mark the first time that they can connect comments directly to their existing ad platforms, meaning they maintain total control over the ads that are being displayed, connected right to their own ad servers.”
The IAB recently released an update for its Native Advertising Playbook that recommended publishers include disclosure language and visual cues for in-feed ads, such as native ads that will begin appearing in Livefyre comments. The IAB research found out the sites surveyed were largely paying attention to disclosure rules, but still cautioned marketers and publishers that, "regardless of context, a reasonable consumer should be able to distinguish between what is paid advertising vs. what is publisher editorial content."
