DO NOT TRUST ME: HOW NEWS READERS PERCEIVE AND RECOGNIZE NATIVE ADVERTISING

Native advertising has developed into a popular marketing tool for publishers and advertisers. However, its success is also criticized, because it is assumed that readers are not able to identify these contributions as advertising. The purpose of this study is to outline whether readers recognize native ads and how it affects the trust in the content of the articles. It is also intended to help advertisers and publishers better understand the impact of native advertising and its disclosure on readers. The method of this research is based on a theoretical and empirical approach. For the theoretical aspects of this study, a literature analysis was applied, whereas a quantitative analysis in the form of an experiment was conducted for the empirical part. The study shows that a majority of the sample did not recognize the article as native ad. After the disclosure of native advertising a decrease in trust could be determined. However, this is not significant, which means that the majority of readers still trust the content of the article. It is also found that respondents for whom the content of the article is relevant are less concerned about the article being paid for. Thus, it can be said that the success of native advertising may in fact be related to the inability of readers to recognize this type of advertising. The increased recognition of such contributions, however, does not necessarily lead to a reduced success of native advertising, because the majority of contributions are trusted even after disclosure.