It’s been a long time coming, if publishers are serving misleading native ads, the Federal Trade Commission could soon begin to hold them responsible. The FTC is now giving a warning to publishers to clearly label native ads as they are serving their properties. As native content is fast increasingly becoming one of the best ways to reach consumers, there are ad publishers who do not fully disclose the sponsored content that they create for their business partners, both in print, online and in video. While dishonest advertising is nothing new, the FTC is hoping to curb deceitful publishing online, according to Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC. “Even though native advertising is a new term, it’s an old concept that the Commission has been concerned about for decades,” Engle said at the Clean Ads I/O conference last week. “For us, the concern with native advertising is whether consumers can recognize what they are seeing is an advertisement or not.” Engle also suggested that newfound partnerships between publishers and agencies could be responsible for the blurred lines between advertising and journalism. “Publishers are creating the ads and acting more like ad agencies,” Engle said. “And ad agencies traditionally have some responsibilities for deceptive advertising.” Forms of native advertising vary. Some place paid links on their pages. Twitter sells promoted tweets in its news feed. Google presents paid search with a yellow “Ad” sign in its search results. The New York Times serves native ads with “paid posts by.” And BuzzFeed discloses sponsored content with “promoted by,” and so on. In order to make more publishers stay honest, the FTC has provided a number of workshops on native advertising disclosure. However, the organization has not yet issued a guideline specifically for this subject. Other watchdog groups are also calling for greater transparency, such as the industry self-regulatory organization the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which recently released its Native Advertising Playbook, advocating the importance of disclosure for paid ad formats.