Dive Brief:

• Brand building service SocialChorus learned the hard way that serving up links within native ad content can be penalized by Google. 
• A campaign launched on SocialChorus for Microsoft's Internet Explorer brought the issue to the company's attention when sponsored posts including links were penalized under Google's policy that links can't be paid for. 
• Using the "nofollow attribute" will save native ads from being penalized for paid links. 

Dive Insight: 

SocialChorus, being a social media and not an SEO company, wasn't even aware that the "nofollow attribute" was an option. If that's the case, there are probably plenty of other firms creating or placing native ads that should be aware.