Dive Brief:
- The initial ad from 23 Stories, the in-house native ad unit at Condé Nast, was a cover set on Bon Appétit sponsored by Samsung.
- The ad only ran on subscriber issues and involved four pages of sponsored content including the magazine cover.
- Reaction from Bon Appétit readers was swift and not positive.
Dive Insight:
Six months after its launch, 23 Stories, Condé Nast’s in-house native advertising group, ran its first ad – a four-page cover set on Bon Appétit sponsored by Samsung and which didn’t have any specific digital element.
Readers did not react well to the “interactive” ad taking over the cover and first pages of the magazine prompting the magazine to put out an Instagram video explaining how to use the cover ad. The move did nothing to ease reader concerns and probably helped intensify what was already becoming a social media reputation management issue with readers taking to Twitter, and Bon Appétit’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Bon Appétit allowed its readers to vent, staying out of the social media fray. Negative social media comments ranged from complaints about an ad taking over the cover of the issue to how some of the food was presented in the Samsung refrigerator ad itself.