Do "Sponsored Posts" links get discounted by google?

[DavidKonigsberg]

Do "Sponsored Posts"  links get discounted by google? A feture post that is tagged by the site as "featured' or "sponsored" are they discounted as paid links by google?

[RyanPurkey]

There's a lot of shades of gray to this question. The more spam-like versions most likely would be discounted, while guest posts on strong websites would still drive link value. For example, if I wrote an article or story that was picked up by the mainstream news and placed on a site like ESPN, USA Today, NYT, etc. the link in the story would be valuable.

If the site that picked up my article or story was a paid repository of low quality content then the link would likely count for much less or could possibly be considered spam if the website was considered a bad neighborhood in regards to linking.