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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (12092)	7/30/1998 12:57:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

Don't agree very much with the "love hate" relationship to advertising. Do Americans love to see ads on their cable or satellite channel that they have paid to gain access to? Of course not. Some ads have entertainment or information value; they cost up to millions to produce and often use celebrities and dazzling special effects. But as the pay back for ad production diminishes as people turn to the Internet, the quality will suffer accordingly. Internet users pay to gain access to the Internet and can ignore or click away from the ads easily. WebWiper and other ad removal programs can also replace the sites ads with their own ads, charity ads or artwork. What impact can that have on Yahoo! and other sites that advertise? Ad wiper software companies may even find a market for sharing the wealth - they get about 10c per click through and could offer to pay users say 5c of each click through for using their ad replacement engine. So the users would get the benefits of Yahoo! or other portal site but would get paid for putting up with the ads. That does degrade the service level the ad sites can provide but that is a by product of the freedom of the Internet. It is easy to assume that a population that has had limited choice in whether to be subjected to ads will automatically fit the patterns of broadcast (brainwash) technology that has saturated society. It is unlikely that the pattern will change overnight or completely. There is some real benefit of ads and they enable content. But there is also an inordinately inefficient diversion of resources and high cost and prejudice of ads (promise them anything but give them . . .) that does not logically need to exist with a non-captive audience. IMO, ads won't disappear but they will have a far less central role on the Internet than the humongous advertising and media industries would like. While it is abundantly clear that the Internet is reshaping communications and commerce, it is not logical to assume that an inherently non hierarchical technology will result in hierarchical patterns of usage and commercial structures.