today’s news outlets are all in a no-win situation where they are forced to contribute to the causes of their own demise to survive... well-meaning people try to “fix” the news. But instead, those methods erode trust in all news outlets... You can draw a straight line from the bad incentive structure forced upon news outlets to the unprecedented d…

Forty-four percent of people shown a native ad couldn’t correctly identify the company that had paid for it... 54% ... indicated that they had felt deceived by native advertising before. And 77% ... didn’t even identify native ads as “advertising... I guess they co-created it, so I guess maybe that’s not an ad.”

Preteens and teens ...often clueless about evaluating the accuracy and trustworthiness of what they find... 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story... according to a Stanford University study of 7,804 students

It’s opening up its digital advertising shop for its subscribers, offering an inventory of sponsored content alongside its inventory of news stories... the AP has made the logical jump to a full-on mini agency... subscribers will be able to flick a switch and have the sponsored content show up nicely integrated on the page... surveys measuring…

The might of Google and Facebook in the digital market, combined with structural changes such as the growth of mobile, which is proving harder to monetise than print, has increased the pace of change since last summer... Guardian Labs, its branded content division launched in 2014, to “make a far, far greater contribution” over the next three yea…

"Following on the heels of the Guardian and Metro UK, News UK has developed a Creative Content Unit to focus on native advertising... We've entered a new world where lines are fuzzier. The ethics shouldn't be fuzzy... If you're straight up and disclose who you are and where you're coming from, readers are mature enough to determine whether it's s…

Great piece on corporate journalism from the FT. "The Richmond Standard is one of the more polished sites to emerge in the age of hyper-local digital news brands such as Patch and DNAinfo.com... it is run and funded by Chevron, the $240bn oil group which owns the Richmond refinery that in August 2012 caught fire... sending more than 15,000 reside…

"... It goes by many other pseudonyms — “native advertising,” “content marketing” — but the basic value proposition in most cases is the same. Publishers work with sponsors to create content that is “native” to the particular platform (in some cases looking very similar to editorial content) and is more engaging than display advertising.... This…

Surprise surprise... "Circa is developing two types of ads: magazine-style full-screen banners, like Flipboard, and sponsored posts... which look and feel like editorial, created by a separate staff.... One future revenue possibility would be licensing access to Circa's article data to other publishers," - News App Circa Looks to Na…