Does having native advertising make a news site less credible? This study, at least, suggests no

Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
Native advertising is providing an ever-larger chunk of digital revenue for publishers these days. But despite (or perhaps because of) the money, lots of journalists are still squeamish about the topic. They worry that, at its core, native advertising is about tricking your reader into reading an ad and thinking its editorial content. Why would a reader who feels duped by a news brand ever want to return to it?
That’s the question that led Patrick Howe and Brady Teufel of Cal Poly to publish a research paper titled “Native Advertising and Digital Natives: The Effects of Age and Advertisement Format on News Website Credibility Judgments.” Howe, an AP journalist turned academic, said he heard experienced journalists worrying about the declining quality of advertising and the potential ethical dilemmas of native advertising...
...In fact, people in both age groups felt more or less the same about the credibility of the two sites, regardless of what kind of advertising it displayed. Young people were slightly more likely to recognize native advertising as an ad, but what they saw did not influence their judgment of the site. Older viewers, meanwhile, tended to find the news site more credible no matter what, suggesting that older readers of digital media are more trusting and less judgmental than their younger counterparts....
http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/04/does-having-native-advertising-make-a-news-site-less-credible-this-study-at-least-suggests-no/?utm_source=API%27s+Need+to+Know+newsletter&utm_campaign=a7866efca1-Need_to_Know_May_1_20145_1_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e3bf78af04-a7866efca1-31701933