Advertising that I don't mind

Ads are annoying, but they don't have to be. Take Tweetie, for example. I use the free, ad sponsored version. I may get the paid, ad-free version, but that would be because I want to send some money Loren Brichter's way for a job well done. (Find Tweetie here:http://www.atebits.com/). It would not be because the ads annoy me.

This is what ads look like in Tweetie:

They're not very frequent. They're usually well designed. Some are even pretty. They're not intrusive. They sit in a little well so they don't sneakily look like tweets. They just slip between the tweets, and I can scroll past them just as I'd scan and scroll past some tweets I don't think I'm interested in today - e.g. I'm in the mood for some Amanda Palmer, sometimes not, so I just skip past those tweets next to her pic without reading.

I have clicked on the ones in Tweetie. I may even have bought stuff that was advertised there. So I'd be concerned about the paid, ad-free Tweetie, because …gulp… I like the ads, and I think I'd miss 'em. They seem well targeted to me as a long-term Mac user.

Other ads I don't mind much at the moment are those in streaming TV, on 4OD, for example. I appreciate that they're a small price to pay for the content I'm getting. If the ads start to take over the content, then it'll be a different story. Right now there are fewer ads in streaming catch-up TV than in broadcast TV, which is nice. Easy to get, legal, with some ads beats torrenting. TV networks are looking more and more like middlemen. I look forward to shows that exist online in this way without having to be bought by a network and broadcast, that become popular by word of mouth and where episodes are released simultaneously across the globe.