One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to provide fresh, relevant content that is interesting and desirable to your target market. This isn't advertising, because you're not directly promoting your product or service; you're simply providing information.

But there's a line between content and advertising that is often crossed, and when that line is crossed, we end up with what is commonly referred to as native advertising: content within a website that appears to be just general content but is really masking an advertising pitch.

Fortune notes that while this practice is becoming increasingly popular with digital publishers, consumers aren't fans at all. According to a survey by the content development company Contently, two-thirds of survey respondents said they felt deceived upon realizing that an article or video was sponsored by a brand.

As the lines between content and advertising become increasingly blurred, businesses need to be aware of how consumers perceive native advertising. It's not just the creators of South Park who take offense. As the Contently survey notes, a big chunk of consumers feel the same way, and in putting out its own guidelines on the subject, the Federal Trade Commission has made it clear that it takes the potential for deceptive advertising with this type of content very seriously too.