It's usually not an advertisement for a product like you would recognize as an "ad." It's made to look like a real news story so that you click on it and go to their website to read the story. I know you've seen those "ads" because sometimes they are (or used to be) on DU.
People who aren't sophisticated politically (i.e. they're not critical thinkers) were constantly being misled by these fake stories that were circulated about Obama, Hillary and the Democratic Party last year. Sometimes if you clicked on the fake story, it was about a movie star or celebrity, but once you got to their website, it was all right-wing BS. Those "stories" are actually advertising space that's paid for the companies who want your "clicks". Don't ever click on them, even if you see them on DU.
A lot of Facebook people were shown this stuff all last year, and they forwarded them around to each other like it was real news. There are some very clueless people on Facebook.
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