La riconoscibilità della natura pubblicitaria della comunicazione alla prova del digital: native advertising tra obbligo di disclosure e difficoltà di controllo

The evolution of advertising tecniques showed a steady upward trend towards the coexistence between advertising and contents. With the advent of the Internet, this path towards "hybridization" has now been completed: a new kind of "content advertising", characterized by adv materials integrated into digital editorial contents, has been developed. Dipping the adv message in the context of user-generated contents, a totally "new generation" of hidden advertising has been created. In this context, this paper addresses the lack of adequate enforcement tools which will assist in preventing, investigating and prosecuting violations of the duty to disclose to the consumer the real origin and nature of adv communication. While someone expressed concerns about the possibility to solve this problem of control in the digital environment, this contribution examines some partially corrective remedies.