As a professor who teaches tech classes, I can tell you we're constantly courted by companies that want us to use their software in our classes. Some make it easier than others. I've never been offered "sponsorship" although to be honest, I wouldn't necessarily turn it down as long as I was making my own choices about who to take it from. Certainly vendors have been known to provide free equipment and licenses to academic institutions. I think where it becomes problematic is if someone else is taking money and, in exchange, constraining my decisions as an educator. So the real question for me about "native ads in education" is, who's buying and who's selling? Are teachers and students going to suffer the consequences of decisions they're not involved in, for someone else's profit?