“The whole notion of having a minivan can be quite degrading — you talk to parents about having to swap out their car for a very practical minivan, and it can be devastating,” says Mr. Willcox, whose company did not work on the campaign. “But what Toyota and the Swagger Wagon did was make having a minivan part of a positive identity for fathers.”

In the Swagger Wagon ad, the father (played by Brian Huskey) is balding but wears thick, black, hipster-type glasses. “The dad in the video is not a cringingly cool dad,” Mr. Willcox says, but “appropriately cool.”

THE relationship between the bloggers and marketers cuts both ways. The marketers are selling to the bloggers, but the bloggers also have something to gain from the marketers, like sponsorships and branding.

Charlie Capen, 31, who blogs at How to Be a Dad, asked Honda, a sponsor of Dad 2.0, to back a project with his blog’s co-founder, Andy Herald, and David Vienna of the site The Daddy Complex. He thought it would be fun to chronicle the men’s 32-hour drive from Los Angeles to the conference in Houston. Honda provided the vehicle, a 2013 Crosstour, and covered video production costs. It will also pay for space to show the video on Mr. Capen’s blog, and for him to promote the video on social media sites, something known as sponsored content.

“The idea is us in the car having a frank and funny conversation about ourselves as fathers,” says Mr. Capen, who is also the director of online engagement at 20th Century Fox. “They are sponsoring us to talk about fatherhood in a way that is funny and consumable.” Neither he nor Honda disclosed further financial details, such as how much the bloggers were paid for the video, which has not yet been posted.

Mr. Capen, who has a 3-year-old son, says his site receives 200,000 to 300,000 unique viewers a month. He has worked with Clorox and the automaker Kia on similar projects. The collaboration with Clorox resulted in a post last December titled “The 3 P’s of Parenting,” referring, the site noted, to “pee, poop and puke.” Clorox tried to entice readers to click through and win $15,000 by sharing their messy moment in a 120-character story.

As mommy bloggers and their readers can attest, sponsorships carry risks. The Federal Trade Commission can fine the blogger and the sponsoring company for not revealing the relationship. And bloggers perceived as simply shilling for companies without regard for quality will lose respect.