As we've all heard, because by now every media outlet on the planet has reported on it, by the end of the month, Disney will put its popular TV shows on the Web for free via ad-supported streaming
video. As Marketwatch columnist Bambi Francisco notes, advertising on the Internet is different from mass advertising on TV: it's based on information the advertiser has collected about us, as opposed
to the more generalized attempts of TV advertisers to get us to remember a brand and a simple message. The fact that Disney is willing to move forward with an ad-supported model speaks volumes about
consumers' understanding of advertising. Two or three years ago this would not be possible, due to the public furor over spam, spyware, pop-ups, and cookies--basically anything having to do with
advertising and targeting. As one university professor observes, not only are consumers "getting" the whole Web advertising and targeting thing, they're also much more comfortable giving up
information on the Web in general: "there are more advantages of giving up privacy now than there used to be." The trend has perhaps moved forward on the strength of social network proliferation: on
Facebook.com, a social network that lets users decide who gets to see their profile, 83 percent of registered users let everyone in their college view their profile. On YouTube, the public broadband
video sensation, nearly all the videos on the site are available for anyone to see. Some say it's a cultural phenomenon brought about by a millennial generation that has been raised on high-speed
Internet. Of course, this degree of openness raises the questions of privacy and safety, which MySpace is attempting to address by spending more on policing the site and putting out advisories to
parents through advertising on MySpace.
Read the whole story at Marketwatch »
