Dive Brief: 

• Increasingly, major publishers like BuzzFeed, Gawker, Washington Post and Hearst are building internal teams, usually dubbed studios, to help advertisers create their sponsored content. 
• Team members number from 5 (Hearst) to 40 (BuzzFeed) and are typically not involved in the sales process to keep their focus on creating stellar content. 
• Overall, studio team members tend to have a journalism background or an editorial focus. 

Dive Insight: 

Removing the sponsored content creators from the sales process is a smart move. The lines are already so blurred between native advertising and editorial content, turning creatives into sales people would confuse the issue further. The development of in-house teams focused solely on native advertising is another point to the practice's staying power.