Genre analysis has been applied into a variety of studies, among which Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993, 2004) have conducted pioneering genre-based researches on language use in academic, scientific, business and professional settings. However, advertorials as an emerging hybridized genre have received little attention. To identify the generic and linguistic characteristics of advertorials, and therefore, to classify advertorials into an appropriate genre, this study carries out a genre analysis of advertorials based on Bhatia (1993)'s seven-step genre analysis method. The research studies a corpus of 55 advertorials collected from four English magazines and two English newspapers. A sub-corpus of 12 samples is further formed for a detailed analysis on linguistic characteristics. Specifically, the genre-based analysis in this study focuses on both macro-linguistic and micro-linguistic levels. On the macro-linguistic level, the generic structure of advertorials is proposed and analyzed by adopting move analysis as a tool. On the micro-linguistic level, appraisal theory is employed to examine the evaluative aspect of language in advertorials. The communicative purposes and paralinguistic features of advertorials are also identified in this study. After genre analysis of advertorials, this study makes a generic comparison of advertorials to other three closely related genres: advertisements, news stories and editorials. This study shows that advertorials share the basic generic and linguistic nature with advertisements and suggests classifying advertorials as a sub-genre of advertisements. Key words: genre analysis, appraisal theory, move analysis, advertorial