New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan has been admirably diligent about tracking the paper’s increased reliance on native advertising to boost its digital ad revenues.

And Sullivan’s latest post is especially diligent.

As Print Fades, Part 4: Native Advertising on The Rise

Since the first piece of native advertising appeared in The Times almost two years ago, Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief revenue officer, has tried to walk a fine line: aggressively tapping into a promising new revenue source without breaching the wall between advertising and journalism.

On the revenue side, native advertising – which mimics the form and appearance of news content – has proven a winner. New as it is, it nevertheless accounted for 18 percent of digital advertising revenue in the third quarter this year or about $9 million; that is up from 10 percent in the second quarter. (The dollar figure is my rough calculation; The Times doesn’t break numbers out that way publicly.)

The vast majority of readers apparently find it unobjectionable.

Then again, some readers do . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.