Advertising vs. Editorial: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

"Explore the Innovation Hall of Fame," read an ad for Intel's 2010 Core Processors on NYTimes.com's home page this week. It encouraged Web site visitors to roll over the ad to view selected articles from the newspaper's archive.

The takeover ad - built by Venables Bell & Partners and The Visionaire Group - then expanded to show a blue circle; the circle's outer radius had a timeline spanning 1910 through 2010 and it included 10 hatch marks. The first mark, placed on 1914, leads to an article from that year headlined, "Evolution of the Motor Car Has Been Meteoric." Other articles from the NYT's archives herald the arrival of the phone, TV, mobile devices, and man's first walk on the moon - and were written at the time of those developments.

Move ahead to 2010: "Intel's Bet on Innovation Pays Off in Faster Chips," read the headline that links to an article published Jan. 14, 2010 in The New York Times.

Don't be confused: This is an ad that incorporates articles written without the influence of the advertiser. Are readers smart enough to know the difference? I'd like to think so.

Welcome to 2010, an era when The New York Times Co. and other publishers are experimenting with advertising and publishing technologies to help shore up revenues. These efforts come at a time when ad dollars are abandoning print newspapers and magazines faster than a Toyota careening down a California freeway.

Seismic changes in advertising and media - offline and online - were also the theme at last week's 2010 Media Summit, sponsored by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. There, Richard Samson, senior counsel at The New York Times, discussed another Intel home page domination ad at NYTimes.com. That ad, promoting the theme "looking to the future," included a mock up of what The New York Times might look like in 2040. "We were very careful...to maintain the integrity of journalism and not give an appearance of influence. Our editorial department is not at all involved in the ads," he said.