By Kristin DeIuliis

Advertisements are often difficult to miss. They fall out of magazines, surround newspaper stories and slow down Internet surfing.

But not all advertising is that obvious. It can be hidden in editorial content, a practice that is increasingly prevalent in online news sites.

A health-related headline might contain a link to an advertisement for a common painkiller. A listing of consumer options might include entries that sponsors pay to place. Or what appears to be an editorial special report on an environmentally sensitive reef is actually an insert provided by an oil company that wants to project a green image.

That blurry line between editorial content and advertising was the subject of Saturday’s panel on the church/state challenge, or the growing problem of separating a news site’s advertisements from its editorial content.

Kevin McKean, who is vice president and editorial director of Consumer Reports, served as a moderator of the panel, which consisted of Jon Fine, a media columnist for Business Week; Thomas Brew, deputy editor for distribution at MSNBC.com, and Linda Yurche, director of marketing and communications at The Baltimore Sun and baltimoresun.com.

In his introduction, McKean -- whose publication accepts no outside advertising -- pointed out the ways in which ads can be disguised in reputable Web sites, and said that doing so makes it difficult for readers to differentiate between sponsored and editorial content.

Yurche addresses those difficulties every day in her position at the Baltimore Sun, where editors have chosen not to play any role in the production of sponsored content.

“I think one of the ways we’ve solved [this problem] is we have a separate division for ad material and [editorial content,]” said Yurche.

BusinessWeek columnist Fine offered a distinction between the ways people approach advertising when dealing with print and online media.

“Online is a completely different medium in terms with how people interact with ads,” said Fine. “The line between church and state is going to be inherently blurry there.”

Yurche agreed, and said people who have grown up reading online news are less sensitive than older readers about the presence of ads.

Still, all of the panelists agreed that advertising should not be disguised as editorial content.

“I don’t think we serve the audience in making them figure out what is an ad and what the editorial content is,” said MSNBC’S Brew. He added: “We talk about readers being cynical … and that’s not a good trend.”

“The most important thing that makes people loyal to a site is knowing the site works for them,” McKean added.

The need for advertising to ensure the economic health of various media was a recurring topic among the panelists and the audience.

Nevertheless, Brew said, journalists and advertising staff who work for the same company will often have very different goals, and it is the ad salesperson’s job to “push the envelope” by finding new and innovative placements for client ads.

Companies that pay to advertise may be specific about where they want their advertisements placed and may object to running with some stories. For the sake of sponsorship relations, businesses will often work to accommodate those demands, said Brew.

Furthermore, Yurche said, much of her readership likes advertising.

It’s the number three reason readers pick up The Sun, she said. “I know that’s really scary, but that’s how the numbers play out.”

As the session neared its end, panelists agreed that it is the ambiguity of some advertising, not the advertising itself, that disillusions readers.

“If [advertisements] are not interfering in the editorial process, than I really don’t have a problem with it,” said Fine.

But the panelists agreed that the increasing amount of advertising that seems designed to be confused with news is a problem that needs to be addressed.

“If a panel at ONA on Saturday morning can’t distinguish [between advertisements and editorial content,] then God knows what the readers think,” said Yurche.