[AJ007]

The complaints in the article look valid to me? Is the data wrong or made up?

Its been very blatant since the early days of print that advertisers either received additional editorial coverage or had plausible problems ignored by writers. The most explicit is the automative review articles which describe a technical object with near poetry. Of course, car companies are a huge advertiser for most newspapers and magazines.

So Vice produces some very edgy well researched content about topics which push in to the land of the dark things big corporations do and are involved in such as slave labor in the Middle East. Of course companies that are worried Vice is the next 60 Minutes sign up and fork over money in excess of what programatic buying would dictate the market rate is.

If advertisers are "buying" native content that has to be disclosed - period - yet because it is hardly enforced almost no one cares.