Related papers: Paid to Look Like Truth: The Prevalence and Dark Patterns of Advertorials in News Outlets

Paid to Look Like Truth: The Prevalence and Dark Patterns of Advertorials in News Outlets

URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12810v1
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:43:50 GMT
Title: Paid to Look Like Truth: The Prevalence and Dark Patterns of Advertorials in News Outlets
Authors: Emmanouil Papadogiannakis, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Nicolas Kourtellis, Evangelos Markatos,
Abstract summary: We conduct the first large-scale and systematic study of advertorials.<n>We find that advertorials appear in 1 out of 3 news sites, including some of the most popular and credible outlets worldwide.<n>We highlight that legal disclaimers intended to inform users of the promotional nature of the content, are often deliberately obscured or difficult to recognize.
Score: 1.9827599081330742
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract: A reader browsing through an online article is highly likely to encounter an advertorial, often without realizing it. Advertorials represent a relatively new marketing strategy where advertisements are deliberately designed to resemble the style and tone of editorial content. Despite their appearance, they are, in fact, paid content intended to promote a product, brand, or service. Studies indicate that advertorials are significantly more effective (81%) and less intrusive than traditional banner ads or pop-ups. Despite ongoing regulatory efforts to ensure clear disclosure of paid content, concerns persist about the deceptive nature of advertorials. Advertorials can mislead readers into believing that they are consuming unbiased editorial content. In doing so, they gain undeserved legitimacy, by draping themselves in the credibility of the publication's design; not to inform or inspire genuine interest, but to deceive. In this study, we conduct the first large-scale and systematic study of advertorials. We propose a novel automated methodology for detecting advertorials in the wild, and we collect 185K ad URLs over a period of 5 months. We investigate the prevalence of problematic advertorials and explore their structural and linguistic characteristics. We find that advertorials appear in 1 out of 3 news sites, including some of the most popular and credible outlets worldwide (e.g., The Guardian, EuroNews, CNN). We further highlight that legal disclaimers intended to inform users of the promotional nature of the content, are often deliberately obscured or difficult to recognize, raising concerns about user protection.

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