Online native advertising

my oct 14, 2014 comment in a toledotalk.com thread.

I encounter sponsored content often on the websites that I read. Some bloggers do it as a source of revenue. Many online media orgs do it now, but it's an issue that gets debated a lot by observers.

As long as the content is easily identified as sponsored, then I see no problem with it. I can remember seeing sponsored content in print magazines long ago.

Media orgs may create the sponsored content, and I think that some media outlets have even created new departments for this type of business.

I believe that The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New York Times, etc. use sponsored content.

News aggregators Mediagazer and Techmeme incorporate sponsored content links.

These bloggers use sponsored content, but I still read them.

• http://mattgemmell.com
• http://inessential.com
• http://daringfireball.net

Scroll down http://qz.com and you'll see sponsored content, like this one for Goldman Sachs.

I like reading Medium, and a couple months ago, BMW began sponsoring content on that site, and those articles are interesting to read. The difference is BMW simply sponsors the stories. Except for one article, the articles are not about a BMW product. The stories will say, "Presented by BMW." Underwritten content.

BMW is sponsoring Re:form, a collection of posts about design edited by Sarah Rich, a former senior editor at Dwell magazine. It's the first time a collection, Medium's term for a digital publication, will have a sponsor. It's also the first attempt by Medium, created in 2012 by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, to generate revenue.

Recode.net has a sponsored content policy.

Re/code accepts a form of advertising we call “Sponsor Content.” Known broadly as “native advertising,” this is a category of ad that takes the form of an article written by, or commissioned by, an advertiser. It’s widely used online, but the technique actually goes back well before the Web, when print publications ran articles written by advertisers that were called “advertorials.”