I suspect this is a lot more informative about the future of journalism. The 'old school' magazine/newspaper group was all about getting 'readership' and then 'blasting their eyeballs'. And there was a tremendous amount of loss to their madness. 6 months after a magazine was published it was entirely unlikely that someone would pick up that issue, see an advertising message, and act on it.
But on the web the long tail is the long tail. Search engines can pull an article out of the mists of time and that advertising is still intact. So you're exposure is very different.
Combining that with the curating effects of a trusted source, and you get a solid advertising value for the right brands.
I expect it will be "successes" like DF which inspire additional people to create this sort of content and that seems to be a good thing for everyone (advertisers and readers).
In addition, I think the ultimate litmus test is whether or not they create "value" for readers... or is it just marketing fluff? Even with my own blog post I tried to create value for people reading it... and making sure they could not just read my experience but learn something from it for their own usage.
Sponsored posts might come up in long tail searches, but most of the pages on the DF site, at least, are monetized with a display ad on the left. This will show the current ad at the time of the page view, not the ad at the time the article was written.
But on the web the long tail is the long tail. Search engines can pull an article out of the mists of time and that advertising is still intact. So you're exposure is very different.
Combining that with the curating effects of a trusted source, and you get a solid advertising value for the right brands.
I expect it will be "successes" like DF which inspire additional people to create this sort of content and that seems to be a good thing for everyone (advertisers and readers).