It is the same as the answer to “When do you trust?”

Advertorials can have all the insightful value in the world, but unless we trust what they say, they have no value to the reader (and a greatly diminished value to the product/service seller). The real value for the product/service seller in an advertorial isn’t awareness, but trust. Publications sell the trust they have established with their readers in exchange for revenue. While this sounds grotesque, I think we concede this is the way business is done across industries.

I believe the reader’s though process is something like this:

1. I trust this journalist and publication based on the rapport they built with me over time. For example, The Backchannel Team has earned 10 trust points with me, and because I like their approach I’m willing to be more open minded, which is worth an additional two ‘trust points’. The maximum number of ‘trust points’ possible for any publication to accrue is 15.
2. If I trust this journalist and publication, I trust that their due diligence process for this product/service seller meets or exceeds my own for the invetment of time in this article that sounds interesting. For example, most days I’d only read an advertorial where the journalist and publication have 9 or more ‘trust points’. If I don’t have anything else to do, I might lower my threshold to 7. For me to spend any time reading, a journalist and publication must have at least 5 ‘trust points’.
3. Consume advertorial. (If I didn’t find the title to be interesting in point 2, I’d skip it altogether.)
4. Evaluate: Does the content meet my expectations for the journalist and publication? 
   (a) If so, that was interesting. I’ll go on with my day, and there was no +/- of ‘trust points’. I might even forget the post was an advertorial and talk about the product with a friend, or purchase it myself. This was a successful transaction for both the publication and the product/service seller because the seller got the attention they wanted and the publication didn’t lose any of my trust.
   (b) That advertorial was boring and added no value to my life. I’ll go on with my day, but I probably don’t want to make that mistake again so I’ll deduct -2 ‘trust points’ (notice the reduction from 12 to 10 is still above my threshold, meaning I would consider reading the next advertorial from this journalist and publisher that sounds interesting). This transaction is suboptimal. While the product/service seller got the attention they wanted, the publication spent some of their ‘trust points’. This alone won’t stop me reading the publication, but the loss of trust is cumulative.
   (c) The journalist was a complete schill in that advertorial, or I feel deceived because I originally didn’t realize that was an advertorial. This is an outcome I don’t want to repeat, so I deduct 4 ‘trust points’. With the reduction from 12 to 8 ‘trust points’, I’ll still read the publication, but am unlikely to read an advertorial from them again unless.
5. Subsequent articles or posts that exceed my expectations result in an increase in ‘trust points’, average content does not increase or decrease the balance, and low quality content or activities suggesting low journalistic integrity decreases the ‘trust points’ balance.

5 Real World Examples

1. I used to subscribe to the print version of Harvard Business Review. I originally subscribed because I kept reading interesting articles they published. For the first year there was a great volume of articles I found interesting and of high quality. The next year, the content of the articles were less interesting thus there was a reduction of a fraction of a ‘trust point’ for each article I read. By a few months into the third year I wasn’t even reading the magazine when it came in (e.g. it fell below 8 ‘trust points’). HBR didn’t product any offensive advertorial, or even have low quality content, but I eventally didn’t ‘trust’ them to be a good use of my time.
2. I used to subscribe to the print version of Wired Magazine. The articles were interesting and about topics I cared about. I especially liked that I could get a taste of a topic in a few articles online, and the print edition would have a deep dive. While the print edition had longer articles, they still seemed concise and not too long. First I felt like ‘games’ were bineg played with pricing. If I recall, the price varied by what browers I used or how I got to the site (reduce ‘trust points’ by 1). Second, the format of the print edition changed. Purportedly it was to be more design focused or future oriented (or something else I didn’t care too much about as a reader), but the font became smaller and/or harder for me to read, thus there was a reduction of a smal fraction of a ‘trust point’ for each article I read. Next, it felt like the articles became longer (or just felt so because of the font) without providing any additional value (fractional ‘trust point’ reduction for each article read). Next, Wired.com started blocking readers that had ad blockers installed. While I understood the reason, I didn’t like (reduction of 2 ‘trust points’). Sometime around this point I let my print subscription lapse (‘trust points’ balance was lower than my threshold for print), but would still read the online articles that sounded interesting. Finally, there was discussion of malware being delivered by the ads on wired.com which you now could not block (reduction of an additional 2 ‘trust points’). No advertorial necessary, but poor advertorials would have accelerated the process.
3. I used to read Lifehacker.com. The content was interesting, but not necessarily of high journalistic quality, thus it accumulated ‘trust points’ slowly. At some point, the publisher added “sponsored content” that while differentiated was not strongly differentiated from their usual content. There were a number of times I clicked on “sponsored content” that I did not realize was sponsored content. This would have been neurtral had the advertorial been valuable, since it was not Lifehacker.com’s ‘trust points’ value was reduced. Eventually I repeated this experience frequently enough that their ‘trust points’ balance fell below my threshold and I no longer read them.
4. I still read Engadget.com, which has “sponsored content”. Over time I’ve enjoyed the content, particularly a live blog of WWDC in 2015. The advertorials are clearly differentiated, and I may have clicked on a few of the advertorials that sounded interesting. The advertorials aren’t horrific and do not seem to diminish the integrity of the site. Thus the ‘trust points’ balance of Engadaget.com is fairly stable and above my threshold. The balance is not high enough that I visit every day, but when I have some down time I will usually check it out at least once.
5. I have read Arstechnica for quite a while. While they have ads, they do not have advertorials. Their ‘trust points’ balance is high, and remains high as there has been nothing to diminish it.

I don’t know if all readers are so overtly rational, but explicit or not, I believe most readers to this to determine if a publication is worth their time to read.