Streaming rivals cable?

On the anything-but-personal publishing front....In a new report entitled Online Video Advertising, Jupiter Research finds that major streaming content sites are drawing as many program viewers (and advertising viewers) in a day as a typical cable TV program.


Still, advertiser spending on streaming video ads is still a tiny percentage of total online ad sales.  This is bound to grow slowly as advertiser assumptions about audience size and streaming video quality become more favorable.  How will Web users react?  Mozilla already has a "Block images from this server" feature that kills ads dead on many pages.  On the other hand, salon.com successfully "sells" a Free Day Pass to their site in exchange for viewing an ad on your way in from the vestibule to the quality content you want access to - one ad for the whole day.  Ads don't always turn people off - they only do when they are obtrusive, annoying, insulting or utterly irrelevant.  The growth of online video advertising will depend on one of two things: either the advertisers' ability to force you to view; or their ability to make you happily willing to.