I used to work as a print magazine editor. "Advertorial", as native advertising in print was called, was loathed and rightly so. It was viewed as a way to hood

I used to work as a print magazine editor. "Advertorial", as native advertising in print was called, was loathed and rightly so. It was viewed as a way to hoodwink the reader, suggesting to them that this advertising copy ("buy this car, it's great!") came with the impartial seal of approval of the editorial staff. There would be a little "Sponsored Content" disclaimer at the top, but it was easily missed. Every editor I knew would strongly resist the sales staff's attempt to get us to run advertorials. By contrast, display advertising - brash, colourful, couldn't be mistaken for editorial - was understood not to be in conflict. Occasionally an advertiser would threaten to pull their ads because we'd written something they didn't like (Casio once pulled all their advertising after I reviewed a terrible digital piano of theirs and pointed out how terrible it was). Our response was generally "ta-ra then". There's some irony that we've now come 180°, and on the web, advertorials are considered good, display advertising bad.