@Kim Davis:  Television is a different beast.  I think that part of it is that commercials are a natural part of it.  However, let's take some lessons from the TV commercial:

• Television content is slower and goes on much longer than Internet content.  TV expects the person to be around for at least half an hour -- the Internet expects maybe a tenth of that.  The longer time investment means that the Commercial provides a break that's welcome.  
• Commercials cooperate with the medium.  Shows are set up for commercial breaks, unlike pop-up ads which show up unannounced and often before the audience even got a taste of the content.
• Commercials are more engaging than Internet ads, which lack the budget of the better commercials or the accidental hilarity of the really really bad independent ones.

The interruptions by pop-ups and graphically weird juxtaposition of ads on news and  information sites is maddening for sure.

Looking back though there were some interruptions I actually found entertaining. And they all happened during the weeks before the 2012 Presidential elections.

The ads, although mostly "attack" ads were uniformely entertaining although grossly offense and inaccruate in most.

But the amount of money presumably spent by their creative sponsors must have garnered a lot of viewers to those ads.

As one of Google's Adsense publishers, I noted a two to three-fold increase in ad earning during the October and November period. Google also reported a record income in their latest statements.

So someone was watching those ads. Even me.

Scott, why hasn't the ease of avoiding ads on television dried up that market?  I've honestly often wondered.

NPR and public tv/radio/media have a similar model of subscription and donation. But it seems like the line between a for-profit media organization and a non-profit media organization may be blurring to the point where there's almost no real distinction to the viewer/reader/listener (the taxman will obviously know).

Ads can be annoying or enriching... but somehow a lot of advertising has chosen to be annoying in order to obtain metrics like click-thrus or mouseovers. So the flashy videos that you need to click to hide provide some feedback on how effective the ad was at attracting your attention (and whether or not you viewed it to the end). But subtle ads lose out on those metrics and advertisers just have to hope that people appreciate them more....

In order for Internet Publishers to really succeed, they need to integregrate the ads instead of mindlessly force them on visitors.  All interruption does is train visitors to avoid ads, and the more persistent they are in pushing the ads, the more resiliant the visitors become in the future.  Eventually they encounter diminishing returns -- either visitors become immune to the advertising or they stop visiting the site -- and what little profit was being generated dries up.

This is partially the fault of the publisher for not screening out bad ads, and partially the fault of the advertisers for not targeting the market or putting enough effort into their advertising content.

Instead, the ad content needs to be blended into the main content.  The Blendtec Blender online ads are an example of advertising as content -- people come to see weird things chopped up in a blender.  Entertaining in their own right, they're also outstanding ads for the top-line blender.

Integrating ads is mostly a matter of actually knowing the context of where the ad will be placed and adjusting it as appropriate -- which is also the reason why it's not being done.  It's more effort and doesn't allow for publishers to just slot any old ad into their content, nor does it make switching ads out easy either.  But that shouldn't be the focus -- the real question is "Would a static, integrated ad make more money than dynamic ads with less context?"

I feel just the opposite...I want people to know who I am...which is why I have been using my real name on the social, since that meant posting on AOL and Delphi forums and Usenet newsgroups!

So I like the Facebook links, but what I don't like is the fragility of having my persona controlled by an outside source.  I keep waiting for the day when I log in and read that my account has been suspended for something controversial I may have writen.   

Ultimately there has to be respect for the content creator, and the laws of the Constitution on Copyright, authorship and creation have to applied that supercede any dictate by portal providers to take, own and use the works of others at no cost.

So, we've got two things going on.   Publishing used to be a megaphone.   Text was delivered to readers, few of whom wrote themselves (though many aspired to).  Being a writer or reporter meant essentially being given access to the printing press.  Electronic and social media forever changed that by putting readers and writers on the same level.  So an article becomes a starting point for a conversation in comments or replies.   The new Letter to the Editor is now the sustaining content of many websites!  

Given, that, many publishers are deficient, I would say, denigrating to those participating content viewers, we the public.   Editing text in many sites, the navigation of threads and so on, is quite awful and disrepectful to social media participants.  For example, every social media site should allow a person the ability to edit and correct spelling and other mistakes, yet some still do not allow this (NYTimes).   If there is editing, it is often tinny and not full featured.  It might not have the ability to use HTML. 

Then there is the advertising issue.  After hours working the web, I refresh myself by running to my e.Ink Kindle and reading a book!   I love the spartaness of pure text, just the letters and numbers on a black and white screen.  I read and read and read...until...I then want to comment and make insights or just discuss the book with other people, and then of course, Amazon's linking and highlight system falls short for some of the reasons described above.

So part of it might be paying for text, ala an Amazon or Netflix type site.  But then the other issue of having a participant driven system that respects the reader/writer as much as the publisher has yet to be found.