Native advertising: an online advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user’s experience.
Native advertising exists. There really isn’t a whole lot to add to a debate about its existence or about the widespread practice: they are commonplace on most media platforms (everywhere from the New York Times to imgur), and many businesses (from Heineken to Netflix) use them with hopes to get distribution that a typical ad wouldn’t achieve.
(If you really want to understand how widespread the practice is, check out this Altimeter presentation on native ads.)
But as John Oliver recently articulated, and many people have piggybacked on, there are some ethical considerations when subjective third parties publish embedded ad content with a publisher.
