Times Publisher Sets Out Plan for "Native" Ads Seeking to allay potential newsroom concerns about the introduction of a new digital product called native advertising, the publisher of The New York Times on Thursday said that features like a color bar and the words "Paid Post" would enable readers to identify material as advertising content. In a letter to employees, the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., also said there would be "strict separation between the newsroom and the job of creating content for the new native ads." Native advertising, also known as branded content, is information provided by marketers that is designed to look more like the articles it appears alongside. It has led to controversy in the journalism industry because it blurs the line between editorial content and advertising. But it has also been viewed as a valuable new source of revenue for news organizations struggling to make up for the decline of print advertising. The platform is "relatively new and can be controversial," Mr. Sulzberger said in his letter, but is necessary to help "restore digital advertising revenue to growth." The advertisements will appear digitally only and will start in January, said Meredith Kopit Levien, executive vice president of advertising at The Times. They will appear first on the newspaper's website, and later will be added to mobile platforms. The advertisements will take all of the forms that editorial content does, Ms. Kopit Levien said, "like narrative, video, data visualization." Ms. Kopit Levien said the paid pages would have a blue border, and "visually, through design cues, it will be made clear that this is not coming from the newsroom." In his letter, Mr. Sulzberger said the ads would also display the relevant company logo and a different typeface. The ads will be created by members of the advertising staff. There will be some new hiring to support the effort, Ms. Kopit Levien said, but she declined to specify how many people would be hired. She also declined to comment on how much money the company expected to earn from the ads, or what portion of advertising revenue it was expected to provide. About 20 members of the advertising team took buyouts in the last month, said Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the company, adding that they would be replaced. "This is not about a reduction in work force," she said. It's about recalibrating the advertising department. Native advertising has proliferated among news organizations in recent years, both online and in print. Several prominent websites, including Gawker and BuzzFeed, have gained attention for the practice. Jonah Peretti, chief executive of BuzzFeed, has said that it need not be a detriment to publishers, and that advertisers, too, can create compelling content. But at a conference in Washington earlier this month, Edith Ramirez, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, said, "By presenting ads that resemble editorial content, an advertiser risks implying, deceptively, that the information comes from a nonbiased source." There have been several notable missteps as publications have experimented with the format. In January, The Atlantic issued an apology after publishing a native advertisement on its website from the Church of Scientology. The text was labeled "sponsor content," but otherwise appeared to be a blog post praising the church's expansion and its leader, David Miscavige. The Atlantic took down the content. Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, has in the past expressed reservations about native advertising. At a conference hosted by Wired magazine in May, she said she was concerned that such advertising created "confusion in readers" minds about where the content comes from," according to accounts of her remarks. In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Abramson said that she had been expressing general concerns and that the guidelines described by Mr. Sulzberger had fully addressed them. "But I'll be watching to make sure that The Times adheres to the standards," she said. There were no discussions about the newsroom creating native advertising content, Ms. Abramson said, "and the newsroom is not going to be involved." Bob Garfield, a media critic who co-hosts a WNYC radio show, "On the Media," and also addressed the F.T.C., said the effectiveness of native advertising depended on readers confusing it with editorial content. If the two are clearly demarcated, he said, the ethical problems diminish. But, he added, "what will also diminish, to near vanishing point, is the readership of those adverts." "What's partly infuriating about this is that news organizations, and The New York Times is by no means the only one, are doing this for a stream of revenue that is not going to make the difference whether they live or die," Mr. Garfield said. Recent surveys of online publishers, cited by the Federal Trade Commission, said that 73 percent currently offered native advertising opportunities and 17 percent were considering offering them.