Whose Truth? Native Advertising in News

In 2024 twelve Fellows from a range of creative, informative and advocacy disciplines were selected to take part in a Fellowship exploring ‘Truth and Lies’ at University of Art’s London AKO Storytelling Institute .

For my final project, I chose to explore the role of brand studios - the in house agencies embedded in news publishers.

My goals are encouraging:

  • Information literacy - Sharing knowledge about: the existence of the studios and the role they play in supporting news publishers revenue

  • Media literacy - Support audiences in understanding the difference between advertising and editorial, making them question sources and the intentions of content.

The motivation was about how you seldom see news stories about commercial decisions in journalism, and how more transparency is needed as trust in news publishers keeps declining.

If journalism wasn’t going to look at itself to inform audiences on revenue structures and decision making, maybe entertainment could?

So, I created two streams of content for the final project: Informative pieces about native advertising, and a pilot TV Show entitled ‘The Agency’.

Special thanks to The AKO Storytelling Institute Team, the Fellows and mentors for their guidance, DM Squared for Contalto access which was invaluable in sourcing examples, Jonathan Hardy of the Branded Content Governance Project for including me in sessions and facilitating introductions with academics.


Learn more through diagrams and real life examples.


Meet the brand studio at INN - an ageing news network, desperately strapped for cash. Can the new intern be trusted to work on a proposal?