World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

by Franklin Foer

The first breach in the barricade is something called “branded content” or “native advertising.” These ads intend to solve the problem of Web advertising—all those banners atop Web pages have become highly ignorable din, ineffective means of branding a firm. Web banner ads physically sit on the fringes of editorial. Branded content is meant to be integrated into the very fabric of a Web site. It is an ad that is written to resemble journalism—a pseudo-piece about the new scientific consensus suggesting better ways to quit smoking in Time, or a sham article on the emerging workforce in the New York Times. Indeed, the ads are usually produced by the media companies themselves, not an ad agency. (The media companies often claim their staff of writers and editors have nothing to do with the copy, though typically it’s their stable of freelancers who do the dirty work.)