Many of us have worried for some years about the likelihood of the division between editorial and advertorial being blurred in the online world. An article in the New York Times shows how extreme this danger has become.

Apparently:

Business news articles appearing yesterday on www.nypost.com included words that were underlined and in green; when a visitor rolled a mouse over those words, a small box labeled “sponsored link” appeared with an advertising message and a link to more information.

This was, though, a test by News Corporation, not a live roll-out. It seems it shouldn’t have been live at all. A spokesperson said

executives at The Post were unsure how an internal test of the new ads wound up on the public Web site. By 6 p.m. yesterday, the ads had disappeared….

Again, bloggers were the first to draw attention to this:

Internet-savvy advertising industry observers quickly noted the appearance of paid ads in Post news coverage. A blog at www.adjab.com first reported it yesterday morning, calling the practice “not normal.”

This of course raises issues of journalism ethics. But it reminds us of wider issues of media policy in a converged world. If PVRs mean viewers skip ads, then we will get more and more pressure for product placement, in-programme sponsorship, and ad-funded programmes.