I read a beautifully written article last week about the future of sustainable agriculture in regional Australia. It was well-researched, quoted real experts, and made genuinely interesting points about soil health and regenerative farming practices. It was also paid for by a fertiliser company.

The disclosure was there — a small “Sponsored Content” label at the top, in a slightly different shade of grey than the publication’s regular category labels. I noticed it because I’m trained to look for it. Most readers, I suspect, did not.

This is native advertising in 2026. It’s more sophisticated than ever, more widespread than ever, and the ethical conversation around it remains as unresolved as it was when the term first entered the media vocabulary a decade ago.

What Native Advertising Actually Is

Native advertising is paid content that matches the form, feel, and function of the editorial content it appears alongside. Unlike a banner ad or a pre-roll video, which are obviously advertisements, native advertising is designed to look like the publication’s own journalism.

It goes by many names: sponsored content, branded content, partner content, brand partnerships, content marketing. The terminology varies, but the essence is the same: a brand pays a publication to produce or host content that serves the brand’s interests while looking like independent editorial.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines native advertising as “paid ads that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.” That last phrase — “feels that they belong” — is both the selling point and the ethical problem.

The Scale of the Problem

Native advertising isn’t a niche concern. It’s a massive, growing part of the media economy.

According to industry estimates, native advertising spending globally exceeded USD $100 billion in 2025. In Australia, native and branded content now represents a significant portion of digital advertising revenue for major publishers. Some publications derive 20-30% of their digital revenue from native advertising.

For context: many of these same publications have shrinking editorial budgets, fewer journalists, and are producing less original reporting. The commercial content teams are often better resourced than the newsrooms. Let that sit for a moment.

The financial pressure is real and I’m sympathetic to it. Publishing is expensive. Journalism is expensive. Traditional display advertising has been decimated by Google and Facebook’s duopoly. Subscriptions help but don’t cover the gap for most outlets. Native advertising fills a genuine revenue void.

But filling a revenue void at the cost of reader trust is a bargain that may not hold up in the long term.

The Ethical Arguments

The Defence

Proponents of native advertising make several fair points:

Publications need revenue to survive. Without advertising income — including native advertising — many outlets would close entirely. Some sponsored content is better than no content at all. Dead publications don’t serve anyone’s interest.

Quality has improved. The best branded content in 2026 is genuinely informative and well-produced. Some of it is better than the editorial content it sits alongside. Brands have learned that blatant sales pitches don’t work in editorial formats, so they invest in content that actually provides value.

Disclosure exists. Major publications label sponsored content. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) Code of Ethics requires that advertising be clearly distinguishable from editorial. The labels are there. Readers just need to look for them.

Readers are sophisticated. The argument goes that modern readers understand the media landscape and can distinguish between editorial and commercial content. They don’t need to be protected from sponsored articles; they need transparent labelling.

The Critique

The counter-arguments are, I think, stronger:

Disclosure doesn’t work as intended. Research consistently shows that readers often miss native advertising labels. A study published in the Journal of Advertising found that only about 20% of readers recognised native advertising as paid content, even when labelled. The labels are technically present but functionally invisible to most audiences.

The whole point is deception. If native advertising were clearly distinguishable from editorial, it wouldn’t work. The format’s effectiveness depends on readers mistaking commercial content for journalism. That’s not an accidental side effect — it’s the business model. The IAB’s own definition celebrates content that “feels like it belongs.” Belonging means blending in. Blending in means being mistaken for something it’s not.

It corrupts editorial judgment. When a publication’s revenue depends on keeping brand partners happy, there’s pressure — overt or subtle — to avoid editorial coverage that might upset those partners. The fertiliser company sponsoring the sustainable agriculture series probably wouldn’t be thrilled by an investigative piece about pesticide contamination from the same publication. Nobody needs to make an explicit threat. The incentive structure does the work silently.

Reader trust is finite. Every time a reader discovers they’ve been reading an advertisement disguised as journalism, their trust in the publication erodes. Not just for the sponsored content, but for all the content. If you can’t tell what’s real and what’s paid for, the rational response is to trust nothing. That’s bad for journalism, bad for democracy, and ultimately bad for the advertisers too.

What’s Changed (and What Hasn’t)

The regulatory landscape has tightened somewhat. The ACCC in Australia and the FTC in the US have both increased scrutiny of native advertising disclosures. The ACCC’s guidance on distinguishing advertising from editorial content is more detailed than it was five years ago.

But enforcement remains spotty. The penalties for inadequate disclosure are small relative to the revenue involved. Most enforcement actions target egregious cases — undisclosed paid reviews, fake testimonials — rather than the grey zone of branded content with technically-present-but-functionally-invisible labels.

Some publications have adopted stricter internal walls. The New York Times’ T Brand Studio, for example, creates branded content that is visually distinct from editorial and produced by a separate team. But even this model isn’t immune to criticism — the content still appears on the same platform, building on the publication’s editorial reputation.

What hasn’t changed is the fundamental tension: native advertising works because it exploits the trust readers place in editorial content. As long as that exploitation is profitable, the practice will continue. The question is whether the industry will self-regulate effectively or whether external regulation will eventually force the issue.

A Modest Proposal

I don’t think native advertising is going away, and I don’t think that’s realistic to demand given the economics of publishing. But I think the industry can do better:

Make labels impossible to miss. Not a subtle tag in a matching colour. A clear, visually distinct border, background colour, and label that leaves zero ambiguity. If it’s sponsored, it should look sponsored. The New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority’s guidance on this is better than most — worth studying.

Separate sponsored content from editorial feeds. Don’t intersperse native advertising with real journalism in the same content stream. Give it its own section. Let readers who want to read branded content find it, but don’t trick readers who came for journalism into reading advertisements.

Maintain genuine editorial independence. The commercial team and the editorial team should have no overlap, no shared meetings about content strategy, and no financial incentives linked to each other’s performance. This is already standard practice at the best publications. It should be universal.

Be honest about what it is. Stop calling it “partner content” or “brand journalism” or “content marketing.” It’s advertising. Advertising produced in editorial format, but advertising nonetheless. Using euphemisms is itself a form of deception.

The media industry’s survival depends on reader trust. Native advertising that undermines that trust is a short-term revenue strategy with long-term consequences. We should be talking about those consequences more honestly than we currently are.

Because the sustainable agriculture article was interesting. But I shouldn’t have had to squint at a grey-on-grey label to know who paid for it.