Naver, Korea's top portal site that rakes in huge revenues from search ads, announced the company will start putting a small "Ad" mark next to its search advertisements, in an effort to help users distinguish ads from normal web search results.
Unlike Google, which displays ads on the side, Naver has been placing ads on the top of search results, often leading to criticism that those ads look too close to normal search results, not ads.
Upon querying "Chinese language", I could see the site indeed had "Ad" mark - albeit not so prominent. Also, ads still appear on the top and it still takes couple of scroll downs before I can reach the first non-commercial content.
As people increasingly rely on search for finding information on the web, more and more small businesses find it inevitable to put ads on search portals - especially on the market-dominating Naver. But the potential issue here is that people tend to think of top results as the most relevant search result, while in Naver's case, the top results could often be the highest bidders for the spot. And that potential issue wouldn't suddenly go away with the introduction of small "Ad" marks.
Unlike Google, which displays ads on the side, Naver has been placing ads on the top of search results, often leading to criticism that those ads look too close to normal search results, not ads.
Upon querying "Chinese language", I could see the site indeed had "Ad" mark - albeit not so prominent. Also, ads still appear on the top and it still takes couple of scroll downs before I can reach the first non-commercial content.
As people increasingly rely on search for finding information on the web, more and more small businesses find it inevitable to put ads on search portals - especially on the market-dominating Naver. But the potential issue here is that people tend to think of top results as the most relevant search result, while in Naver's case, the top results could often be the highest bidders for the spot. And that potential issue wouldn't suddenly go away with the introduction of small "Ad" marks.
TAG Naver
