Jason Kottke takes up the issue of advertising inside blogs and the apparent commercialization of a publishing movement that had initially appeared as being not only advertising-free, but in many ways also openly against traditional, intrusive ad practices.

He writes:

Lots of interesting observations to be made about the commercialization of weblogs…

a) the quick uptake of advertising on blogs, the increasingly false perception of blogs as inherently unbiased by commercial interests (and therefore preferable to “big media”),

b) the continuing shift from blogging as a hobby to blogging for a variety of reasons,

c) the number of weblogs launching lately that have ads from day one,

d) the demographic difference between the typical circa-2002 blogger and the blogger of today, etc.

Just a couple of years ago, almost every weblog on a top 100 list would have been non-commercial and the blogosphere in general was mostly opposed to advertising on blogs. Now it’s accepted to the point where I haven’t heard anyone complain about it in months…even Boing Boing’s audience didn’t protest too much when they added advertising a couple of months ago.“

And I agree this is truly an important, strategically critical topic for all the independent publishers, bloggers, news reporters out there.

Many have been asking themselves whether or not this is appropriate, ethical, in line with what they wanted and useful.

And the answers to this, are indeed very relevant issues to be talked about.

Mostly because we tend to apply our mental models from the past to situations that in the meanwhile have drastically changed (from print to online publishing), and now rest upon a totally different set of variables and assumptions (ethics, drives and monetization opportunities of the blogosphere vs. the online mainstream and offline traditional media).

Read more about what I have commented on Jason Kottke’s site and what I truly think of this fascinating topic.