Soon after publishing a piece of sponsored content from the Church of Scientology on its website, The Atlantic, one of the last, thriving, respected brands in the world of online journalism, have removed it amid an uproar from media critics and readers. The post, (now down, but which you can see ) was designed to appear like any other bit of news on the site, and readers who didn’t notice the Sponsored Content button toward the top of the page may well have been tricked into thinking they were reading an editorial from the staff. Not particularly astute readers, sure, but the point remains.
That’s the essence of sponsored content — or, as its called, in a grossly ball-shivering bit of neologizing around The Atlantic, “native advertising”; it’s meant to play on the assumption that a harried reader will stumble into it like a wordy bear trap in the thicket. It’s a common practice print that has been smuggled into the revenue-generating blueprints of popular sites like Gawker and Buzzfeed as well. In print, however, there’s often a different type-set, or even quality of paper used in the advertorials — on the web it’s a lot easier to fit the Trojan Horse through the gate. Read the rest
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