Native advertising is a marketing technique where an advertisement unit follows the form and the function of the environment where it dwells; because of its similarity to the surrounding content there lies probability that a consumer will not be able to distinguish between independent editorial content and an advertisement. With regard to the unfair competition law it is considered as a potentially deceptive commercial practice that is regulated both under EU and US law; both legal systems communicate the requirement of a clear and conspicuous identification of native advertisements. Related to this requirement two important aspects are the efficiency of the advertisement disclosure within particular native advertisement units and the formation of disclosure standards. As a supportive tool for more transparent criteria both systems use best commercial practices that provide a certain level of flexibility to the legislation in this highly progressive advertising area. As a whole, I consider the US regulative system to be more concrete and applicative, compared to the EU regulative system. Research show that a relatively high percentage of consumers is not able to recognize the commercial intent in native advertisements, therefore a need for more strict and unified disclosure standards remains to be fulfilled.
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