The race between advertisers and publishers centers on creating content that grabs our attention while hiding its corporate sales pitch. It is “black ops advertising,” and it is the purposeful masking of corporate bias by either the advertiser or the publisher so that we can’t discern the underlying perspective — is it an ad? Is it an article? Can it be both? Was the article I read this morning paid for by Apple? Was that BuzzFeed quiz a promotion? Is that post on Facebook “organic,” or did a marketer pay for me to see it?

To read the rest of the excerpt, visit Smashpipe.