Well, we are moving towards promoted/sponsored content in lieu of ads, so probably in the not distant future we might start seeing more product placement, etc.

Female Pornstar: Yes! Harder!

Male Pornstar: Gimme a sec, I need to replenish my electrolytes with a big gulp of Brawndo!

That would be pretty entertaining. Realistically they could do a lot of product placement for sex toys, lube, condoms, and things that fit the target demographic :)

They call this native advertising, where you think you're reading a piece of journalism, you're a few paragraphs in and suddenly it hits you that the article was written to conceal an advertisement, and you feel intellectually violated.

From http://adage.com/article/media/york-times-debuts-native-ad-u...

> Times staff pitched story ideas to Dell. One of Dell's first paid posts delves into the topic of millennials in the workplace. The author is a freelancer that the Times contracted, according to Ms. Losee. The millennial generation is among four topics Dell customers are interested in learning more about, she said. A Times editor -- not from its newsroom, but instead part of an internal "content studio" -- pitched ideas to Dell around these topics that weren't related to Dell products. Dell approved the story ideas, which the Times farmed out to freelancers.

You're describing native advertising, yes, but parent comment is referring to dark patterns like popunders and click jacking.

Edit: Never mind! I see now how this comment is relevant :) It's too early.

I think I still would. I skip commercials on my DVR and change radio stations in my car when an ad comes on. Using an ad blocker feels the same to me.

I meant like the way youtube does it

Ah, ok. I pay for YouTube Red so I don't have to see ads. Every once in a while I get logged out of YouTube and start seeing ads again and it's pretty awful.

> Maybe people wouldn't use adblockers if their ads were elegantly integrated with their content

I would.

Adblockers would start including machine-learning-based heuristics to flag articles as "probably an ad" etc.

Also, at least in Germany, it is forbidden by law for press publications to mix ads and editorial content. (Good luck enforcing it, though.) What's the situation in the US there?

The FTC has released guidelines for native advertising - https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...

How is press publication defined? My first thought was printing press but that wouldn't include digital-only publications.

Good point. I checked and "press" seems to be bound to physical media. It is apparently disputed if press law also applies to internet media. The more you know...

Do mean from a design perspective or from a content perspective? From a design perspective, I agree, but clients pay for obnoxious ads and integrated content is hard to produce even with a sea of copy writers.