ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the newly emerging intermediaries between businesses, media and the public relations people using Content providers. Those new agencies are increasingly taking charge of trending promotional practices such as 'content marketing', 'native advertising', 'brand journalism' and 'promoted user endorsement'. They create, re-purpose and curate online content such as articles, lists, charts, audios, videos, infographics, archives and documentaries to drive profitable action. They present challenge to the profession of public relations, including to its traditional functions and roles. Content providers take indirect communication to a new level. Other elements of content marketing partly 'compensate' for the visibility of sponsor. The content providers are imposing on public relations a structural and functional conversion from wholesaler to retailer of information. In the traditional binary, the public relation (PR) practitioner is a source of information for journalist – an information subsidiary. Public relations practitioners are struggling to define their roles in the new promotional practices such as content marketing and native advertising.
