Professor Heo Man-seop: “It is more effective to transparently disclose whether there is an advertisement or not.”

Professor Heo Man-seop: “It is more effective to transparently disclose whether there is an advertisement or not.”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Go Mi-hye = A survey showed that 8 out of 10 people experienced confusion and misunderstanding due to 'article-type advertisements' that are not clearly distinguishable from articles.

Heo Man-seop, a professor in the Department of Digital Media and Communication at Kangwon National University, recently reported these findings through a presentation on ‘Improving the effectiveness of media autonomous deliberation related to article-type advertisements’ at the Journalism Ethics Forum hosted by the Korea Newspaper Ethics Committee.

As a result of Professor Heo's survey commissioned by Embrain last June to survey audience perceptions of article-type advertisements among 600 men and women over the age of 19, 80.0% of respondents answered that they 'often' or 'sometimes' experienced confusion while reading an article as to whether it was an article or an advertisement.

81.8% of respondents said they had read something they thought was an article but later realized it was an advertisement.

Readers’ evaluation of article-type advertisements was low. In terms of reliability and usability, it was rated in the low 2s out of 5. Most of the words that come to mind when thinking of 'article-type advertising' are negative, such as 'difficult to believe', 'unreliable', 'sophisticated', and 'deceptive'.

68.8% of respondents considered article-type advertisements to be a problem, and cited 'distortion of consumers' rational judgment', 'deception of consumers and readers', and 'lowering trust in the media' as the main reasons.

In this survey, Professor Heo also conducted an experiment in which respondents were asked to read various types of article-type advertising content, including those that explicitly stated that it was an advertisement and those that displayed the reporter's byline without indicating an advertisement. As a result, it was found that when it was indicated that it was an advertisement and the name of the advertiser was also revealed, it actually led to improved attitude towards the advertisement and purchase intention.

Professor Heo said, "This result demonstrates that transparently revealing that it is an advertisement increases trust and does not damage the effectiveness of the advertisement. However, there is a high possibility that recipients without prior knowledge will not be fully aware of the deceptiveness of article-type advertisements without advertisement indication."

Based on the results of this perception survey, the current status of article-type advertisements in Korea, and analysis of overseas cases, he proposed measures such as ▲ segmenting the byline notation to reflect sponsorship status, ▲ linking article-type advertisement violations with portal partnership evaluation, and ▲ providing media incentives to comply with self-deliberation in order to increase the effectiveness of self-review of article-type advertisements.