Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This study is a genre analysis of native ads on a predominant Chinese social media platform, WeChat public accounts (WPAs). Native advertising is a term to describe “any paid advertising that takes the specific form and appearance of editorial content of the publisher itself” (Wojdynski and Evans 2016, p. 157). Wechat claims one billion daily active users as of January 2019, and more than $680 million in advertising revenue in quarter three 2018 (Iqbal 2019). One of the most common formats of advertising on Wechat is native ads on WPAs, produced by individuals, online celebrities, new media companies: a form of democratization of the advertising industry in China. The genre of these ads on WPAs is distinctive. Normally the narrative starts as a normal article of the WPA author, but toward the end it makes a “seamless” transition to the advertised brand. This study reviews 100 recent native ads from 12 WPAs. With a reference to Frow’s (2015) genre theory, this study identifies three strategies of brand disclosure: problem-solution, analogy, and associative transitioning. Elaborated analysis with examples is provided. We argue that the narrative before the disclosure of the brand serves as a form of “narrative transportation” (Gerrig 1993). More than 90% of narrative transportations on these ads are “reality-based”, only a few are “fiction-based”. Therefore, how each of the strategies works can be tested in future studies, and some issues, such as copyright (e.g., reference to other celebrities) in the reality-based narratives can be researched.