Interesting. It seems like that practice would be inconsistent with professional editorial guidelines and FTC regulations, if not the law. I would certainly consider it unethical to promote a product that someone is being paid to promote without disclosing the financial arrangement.
Editorial Guidelines | ASME
Thanks for, yet again, quoting the internet to "educate" us all. You didn't spend any time thinking about my post, did you? You just made a mad dash to Google so you could tell me that I'm stupid and you are smart.
Advertorials are ads that look like articles that are provided by the advertiser, and the advertiser pays for the page space for them. They BUY space in the magazine, and provide the content. Those are disclosed as advertising.
When a magazine publishes an article, independently, that is complimentary to an advertiser, it is not the same thing. The magazine provides the content, and they use their unpaid pages to publish it. Like I said before, and you probably skimmed over, It is a balancing act. You want to be complimentary of the product/brand, but you can't lie about it. If
Aston Martin wanted us to say their new car can fly, it better be able to fly, or we were not going to say it does. When I wrote an article about a car, EVERY word was 100-percent true, even if it was intentionally complimentary. If a car was a piece of crap, I didn't write an article trashing it, I just didn't write about it at all. We just didn't publish that kind of article.
As for transparency, news and editorial are not the same. If you are reporting the news, you are held to a higher standard than if you are publishing an article that is clearly
opinion, like a review of a new car (what we did).
CD