Contently Comic: This Snap Count Was Brought to You by Nationwide

Native ads are having a moment. Like the Macarena in the mid-’90s, they’ve gotten so ubiquitous that we’re left wondering, “Wait, how exactly did this happen?”

The one place that’s been relatively immune to native advertising—and the hand-wringing it induces—is TV. Sure, sports pre-game shows have always had a segments like “5 Keys to the Game Brought to You by Telecommunication Giant X,” but there haven’t been the kinds of deep brand-publisher editorial partnerships that we’ve seen at major publishers.

That’s been changing this year with everyone’s favorite brand to hate: DraftKings, the daily fantasy sports giant that’s flooded the airwaves with corny commercials featuring all the bros from high school that randomly like your Facebook photos. DraftKings inked a major deal this year to integrate its brand into ESPN programming. The results have been somewhat disastrous, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see more blatant integrations like it.

And so for our latest Contently Comic we wondered: How far could this go? Could native ads actually extend to live sports?

If it did, there’s only one brand-loving quarterback who could take us there.