Edelman's 2013 Sponsored Content Report, Revisited

Originally published April 2014. Updated September 29, 2026.

In July 2013, Edelman's then Chief Content Strategist Steve Rubel published a research report diagnosing the collapse of paid, owned, and earned media into one converging category, and that diagnosis still holds more than a decade later. The report offered no clean prescription, only an honest read: brands were producing journalism, publishers were producing branded content, and the industry's existing vocabulary no longer fit what was happening.

What did Edelman's 2013 sponsored content report actually say?

Rubel's framing was direct. Brands were producing journalism. Publishers were producing branded content. The buyer side and sell side of media were running together, and sponsored content was only the visible edge of a structural shift: the media business losing its ad revenue base, with brand-funded content moving in to fill the gap.

The report, sometimes referenced as part of Edelman's broader "Media Cloverleaf" research stream, did not resolve the question. It said, in effect, that the firm was still working through it. For the world's largest independent PR firm to publish research that ended on an open question was an unusual move, and an honest one.

Why does the 2013 diagnosis still read correctly in 2026?

The structural read from 2013 held up. The media business kept losing its ad revenue base. Brand-funded content kept expanding. The industry's paid, owned, and earned vocabulary kept drifting, well before generative AI added a further layer to the same argument: AI engines now synthesize brand and publisher content into a single answer, collapsing the paid/owned/earned distinction even further than sponsored content did on its own.

Edelman's willingness to publish research that admitted uncertainty was itself the institutional signal. The firm intended to study the shift in public rather than resolve it quietly inside individual client engagements.

Who was Steve Rubel, and what was his role at Edelman?

Steve Rubel joined Edelman in 2008 from Micro Persuasion, the blog he had built into one of the most widely read PR and media properties of the mid-2000s. At Edelman he ran the firm's content strategy work and authored a series of research and trend pieces, with the 2013 sponsored content report sitting inside that stream. Rubel left Edelman in 2018.

Related: Edelman Agency Profile