Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future Publishing, argued that major advertisers had no truck with user-generated content as an advertising platform – an opinion at odds with other members of the panel.
Spring said: "Advertisers are scared of the prospect of seeing their ads next to user-generated content. This won't change. All it takes is one bad example to put brands off."
Brands such as First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, and Prudential have previously pulled ads from social networking site Facebook, after they appeared on a British National Party page.
But other panellists fundamentally disagreed, with Tim Brooks, managing director of Guardian News & Media, pointing to particular examples from his own newspaper to back up his argument.
Brooks said: "Look how fast Facebook has grown", adding that some of the most-prized recent work at The Guardian had been published through this channel.
He pointed to the example of the video acquired by a Guardian journalist in the Ian Tomlinson murder case, as well as some of the user-generated election editorial pieces it had undertaken.
Mark Kelsey, chief executive of Reed Business Information, publisher of Farmers Weekly, agreed with Brookes, saying that traffic at the Farmers Weekly website had shot up since it had included user-generated channels.
More from the PPA Conference
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