This trend is not new, although it's certainly accelerating, which is natural given the current media landscape. The marriage of content and advertising gets around a lot of issues, such as ad blocking and banner blindness. Any time I hear proprietors complaining about ad blockers, I tell them they need to reconsider their content/business relationship.<p>It has worked for TV, movies, and respected magazines are also on the bandwagon. Monocle magazine, for example, seems to blur the line a lot, and you end up with entire supplements written in-house promoting a <i>country</i> on the behalf of a tourism or business board. They're well produced and the angle is clear. Lots more about this model at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/media/24carr.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/media/24carr.html...</a><p>All that aside (and I think it's a step in the right direction anyway), PR flacks have been achieving similar ends for decades by bribing, coercing, or even entering fully fledged business relationships with journalists and publications. At the least, most modern attempts are reasonably transparent, rather than pretending to be something they aren't.