All the rest is spam

Scott Karp's post Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail on the Web paints a bleak picture for those who would continue to interrupt.

What we seek, we want. All the rest is spam.

At the guts of this issue is a big question facing media: What do you do when you don't control the user experience?
Scott quotes Jacob Nielson:

"... when people go online they know what they want and how to do it... This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them."

... all the rest is spam.

Users don't put up with being interrupted or distracted. They find a way around the control you would impose. It's a network, not a one-way street, stoopid.

And Scott says: "Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for advertisers."

Yep. It's time to think of the ad as content and the content as the ad. It's time to think of models which are a better fit with the networked world, rather than the broadcast one.