Edelman Studies Public Relations: The 2013 Sponsored Content Report
In July 2013, Edelman published a research report on sponsored content authored by Steve Rubel. The honest diagnosis from the world's largest independent PR firm of where paid, owned, and earned media were converging — and why the framing still reads correctly.
In July 2013, Edelman published a research report on sponsored content authored by Steve Rubel, then the firm's Chief Content Strategist. The report was an honest piece of work from the world's largest independent PR firm, asking a question the industry had no clean answer for: where is paid, owned, and earned media heading as the lines between them collapse?
The 2013 Edelman / Rubel report — sometimes referenced as part of the firm's broader "Media Cloverleaf" research stream — was an institutional acknowledgment that the traditional PR-versus-advertising distinction was eroding. Sponsored content, native advertising, branded journalism, and transmedia storytelling were producing categories the industry's existing vocabulary didn't cover.
What the report actually said
Rubel's framing was direct. Paid, owned, and earned media were converging. Brands were producing journalism. Publishers were producing branded content. The buyer-side and sell-side of media were running together. Sponsored content was the visible edge of the convergence, but the underlying shift was structural — the media business losing its ad-revenue base, and brand-funded content moving in to fill the gap.
The report did not offer a clean prescription. It said, essentially, that the firm was still studying the question. For the largest independent PR firm in the world to publish a research paper that ended on "we are working through this" was an unusual move. It was also an honest one.
Why the 2013 frame still reads cleanly
The structural read in 2013 was correct. The media business has continued to lose its ad-revenue base. Brand-funded content has continued to expand. The vocabulary the industry uses to describe paid-owned-earned has continued to drift.
Edelman's willingness to publish a research paper that admitted uncertainty was the institutional move. It signaled that the firm intended to study the structural shift in public, not solve it inside one client engagement at a time.
Steve Rubel's role
Steve Rubel joined Edelman in 2008 from Micro Persuasion, the blog he had built into one of the most-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. The 2013 sponsored content report sat inside that stream.
Rubel left Edelman in 2018. The Media Cloverleaf and sponsored content research he authored remains a reference point in the industry's ongoing debate about how paid, owned, and earned media should be valued, measured, and integrated.
The takeaway
Edelman in 2013 was studying the question every PR firm in the world was facing. The report did not deliver a solved answer. It delivered an honest diagnosis. More than a decade later, the diagnosis still reads correctly.
