مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

In the second decade ofthe 21st century Israeli public relations (PR) practitioners are engaged in promotion of paid digital content marketing (i.e., paid DCM), without full disclosure, on major and niche Internet sites. Content marketing is relatively new to the internet, but the practice of paid brand promotion on commercial television programs (such as product/brand placement and presenting people as experts in various fields) is “old news.The ¨ Israeli Second Authority for Television and Radio Law prohibits integration of paid content without endorser disclosure. Yet, in Israel in 2015, there is no regulation of undisclosed paid DCM.

Whether by brand choice or as a result of commercial media that enables and facilitates the practice of sponsored content, the practice of embedded paid content (i.e., marketing content embedded in media content without endorser disclosure) is spreading and expanding into digital media. Paid DCM is no longer under the exclusive control of advertising agencies, and is now exploited by PR practitioners. Thus far, there has been no academic discussion of the implications of this relatively new practice on PR definitions, theories, and ethics.

The current article has four objectives: 1. Discussing the definitions of PR practice in light of the new embedded paid content phenomenon. 2. Confirming the change in media relations influenced by embedded DCM practice. 3. Deliberating on the two-way symmetric model as the new PR practice does not require fostering good relationships between organizations and its stakeholders. 4. Presenting the ethical implications of the relatively new practice of embedded DCM for PR practitioners and organization stakeholders. In order to discuss the above issues, we will begin by providing an overview of digital paid content, as well as an abbreviated summary of the technological changes and digital media consumption changes that prompted this new PR practice. Secondly, we will present previous definitions of PR, marketing PR, and advertising, mainly focusing on the issues of control over content in order to raise the subject of the need for reviewing definitions of PR practice and theories. Finally, we will discuss the ethical implications of embedded paid DCM for PR.