Information pollution? Labelling and format of advertorials

Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 2000 by Cameron, Glen T, Ju-Pak, Kuen-Hee

Blurring occurs when advertorials masquerade as editorial items. Newspapers should safeguard editorial credibility by making advertorials distinct from editorial content.

Editorial-like advertising in newspapers, frequently referred to as advertorials, is one of the fastest growing media trends in the advertising industry over the past decade. As Scott Donaton mentioned, "it is nearly impossible to open any magazine without confronting a special ad section or two or even, occasionally, three... ."1 Empirical studies track a steady increase in use of advertorials since 1980.2 Mary Alice Shaver and Regina Louise Lewis attribute the increase in use of innovative editorial and advertising products to the increasingly competitive market that newspapers face.3

Many media critics express concern that advertorials are not labeled as a commercial message and that the labels, when used, are often inconspicuously placed.4 Steve Singer has argued that the absence of the label or disclaimer in editorial-like advertising may induce readers into misinterpreting advertorials as the publication's editorial content.5 Singer has been joined by other researchers voicing similar concerns.6

Gary Armstrong, M.N. Gurol, and Frederick A. Russ have suggested that such misinterpretation of an advertisement into an editorial may be due not only to the absence of the label but also to other executional components such as typesize and typeface employed in the headline, disclaimer, copy text and the absence of sponsor's name or logo.7 Advertorial headlines are a prominent executional component adding to confusion. Headlines are frequently used in advertorials delivering messages about products or services.8 Advocacy advertorials like the well-known Mobil ads frequently and consistently use the how to essay- or news-oriented headline, simulating the editorial format. 9

Pundits have written in the trade press that publishers may be too dependent on this potentially deceptive type of commercial message.10 This observation has prompted debate in both media and advertising industries.11 We offer empirical evidence here about characteristics of advertorials that might cause information pollution.

Advertorials and information pollution

Media critics and industry leaders in magazine and newspaper publishing have expressed concern about the blurring of lines between commercial and editorial content that can occur when advertorials are included in a publication. Glen Cameron and Patricia Curtin describe this blurring as information pollution.12 In a survey of editors and advertising managers, Cameron and J.E. Haley found that objections to advertorials were more the province of editorial staff than of advertising managers.13

Editors tended to view advertorials as borrowing from the third-party endorsement conferred on editorial copy by journalistic standards of objectivity. A number of empirical studies have borne out this view.14 C.T. Salmon, L.N. Reid, James Pokrywczynski and Robert Willett15 concisely described the borrowing of editorial credibility. "With the appearance of 'news,' an advocacy message is legitimized by third-party credibility - the implicit approval of the medium in which the information is presented." Supporting this view, Cameron found experimental evidence for greater credibility and impact when stories were presented as editorial copy than when the identical story was presented with a label as advertising.16

The belief that an editorial format can be more effective than traditional advertising formats is evidenced by trends toward increased advertorial use and by the views expressed among advertisers/media planners in a number of studies.17 In terms of advertising expenditures, the total 1991 revenue of $229 million from this special type of advertising is more than double the 1986 figure of $112 million.18

The putative borrowing of editorial credibility probably results from the essential nature of advertorials. In a forthcoming paper,' 9 Kuen-Hee Ju-Pak and Cameron synthesized conceptual definitions of others in defining advertorials as:

blocks of paid-for, commercial message, featuring any object or objects (such as products, services, organizations, individuals, ideas, issues etc.) that simulates the editorial content of a publication in terms of design/structure, visual/verbal content, and/or context in which it appears.

In another forthcoming piece, Ju-Pak, Kim and Cameron identify three common factors in the source credibility literature that underlie the concern for maintaining a clear distinction between editorial and advertorial messages:

Advertorials represent a vested interest in the message that doesn't exist for editorial copy. This element lowers the credibility of a message source. Explicit intent to persuade is a second element distinguishing editorial and advertorial copy. Journalistic content aspires to a standard of objectivity not attributed to commercial messages. Bias is also attributed to advertising messages while editorial copy tends to enjoy third-party credibility based on purported lack of bias.