Is it time for marketers who use native advertising to wake up to the fact that they could be causing potential damage to their brands by creating the impression that they are trying to fool their consumers? Specifically, they are failing to adequately signal to users that the content they are about to see, which has been crafted to look like the editorial of the host site, is in fact a paid ad. Two recent judgments against some leading content discovery platforms indicate that this is a global problem:

For all the buzz about native advertising, the term lacks a real definition. Related article links, promoted post advertising on social channels and even display ads tucked in between paragraphs of a blog post have all been umbrellaed under the term "native advertising." It's time for the industry to solidify a single definition for native advertising, before this powerful form of advertising slips deeper into marketing buzzword territory. Here are five key characteristics that pass the test of true native advertising.

I had a meeting last week with an organization I'm just getting to know. The conversation was peppered with acronyms as they described their organizational structure. It was a sea of letters, and at one point I just started to chuckle because it was all so confusing. Confusing to me, not to them. To them, the whole thing made perfect sense; they were all speaking the same language. At some point, I'll have a complete and full understanding of all that jargon. I'll be in the club. Which will be great, because it's cool to be with the in-crowd. However, …

Amplification works two ways: It magnifies your talent; it magnifies your flaws. The volume of "American Idol" hopefuls every year proves the seductive ease of amplification: Many are willing to be "not good" if promised a reach of millions. A quick review of most branded content on amplification networks reinforces this as the current state of content marketing, where loud seems better than good. The amplification of content, even when it might turn out to be counterproductive for the marketer, is a much easier spending decision than spending on quality. After all, it seems to answer the core question of …