Dive Brief: 

• The growing demand for native advertising has produced some bad apple publishers that are promising content from editorial staff, but then hiring marketing freelancers to do the writing. 
• One example of unsavory behavior by publishers is receiving $1,000 from an advertiser for a piece and then paying a freelance writer only $100. 
• Publishers are under pressure to offer native advertising at low prices, but the process is expensive to create and hard to scale, often leading to publishers finding low-cost writers who produce poor content. 

Dive Insight: 

The problems of what advertising is actually worth and what advertisers are willing to pay isn't a new problem. Native advertising is now facing an old problem with a new face. Publishers have a responsibility to educate advertisers on how complex native advertising can be to create so that the industry doesn't suffer as a whole. Ultimately, transparency can resolve a lot of the issues.