Watch John Oliver's Hilarious Attack on Native Advertising

John Oliver may be uniquely positioned to take down some of the hype surrounding native advertising, given that his "Last Week Tonight" appears on ad-free HBO, as he notes at the top of this segment that aired last night. Afforded that freedom, he pulls no punches, taking on media execs like Jonah Peretti, founder-CEO of BuzzFeed, which gets 100% of its revenue from native advertising; Joe Ripp, the Time Inc. CEO who has been pulling down the wall between church and state as his company builds a new native-advertising unit; and Meredith Kopit Levien, exec-VP of advertising at The New York Times, which has also been enthusiastically embracing native advertising. The whole extended rant is scathing, thought-provoking and very funny -- particularly at the end when Oliver, suggesting that turnabout is fair play, injects some hard-news content into a (fake) Diet Coke commercial. Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Watch John Oliver's Hilarious Attack on Native Advertising

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