It's a tricky balance, make no mistake. I'm not involved in sales, but my understanding is that "run our PR fluff" pays really well, and it doesn't require any

It's a tricky balance, make no mistake. I'm not involved in sales, but my understanding is that "run our PR fluff" pays really well, and it doesn't require any man-hours on the media company's end of things. Financially, it's massively tempting. But there's an awareness that that sort of thing comes at the cost of reputation, trustworthiness, and engagement; several years ago we'd run that sort of thing as clearly-marked "sponsored posts" (another commenter had a few examples from 2010-2011 linked below). Those never converted well, never engaged well, and generally left readers feeling a little ripped off. Nobody liked them. By contrast, the "modern" native advertising we do tends to be some of our highest-engagement content. It's generally high-effort, well-researched, well-produced stuff (and has to be, in order to satisfy our obligations to the advertiser) that people enjoy and which converts well. I think that rational and reasonable people are right to be suspicious of the practice; after all, the industry has an established tradition of advertorials already. But I think it's worth pointing out that the "native advertising" trend is about moving away from advertorials and towards content that more naturally marries media and advertiser interests. In a perfect world, nobody would have to run native advertising. But in the meantime, when it's done properly, I don't really have any issue with it when it's transparent and isn't just a reprint of a PR release.