Zune Thoughts: Ad Supported Content?

"On Tuesday, Microsoft is expected to show some of the first results of the group's work -- including a plan to test advertising on the online site Zune Social and, in a limited way, on the Zune music devices themselves. As an example, Kroese showed a prototype Zune Social profile page for the rapper Bun B, tied to the CMJ college music festival, with branded advertising for Doritos. Zune users will be able to befriend sponsored artists and get free content, such as music playlists and videos. Users also will have the option of synching the associated content to their Zune devices. In the concept that Kroese showed, Doritos branding was visible on the Zune screen behind content synched from Bun B's profile."


My first reaction to this was "What??" I mean, how could they push ads onto our media players? We pay for the hardware and content. Putting an ad on the device? But then when I read the rest of it, it made a bit more sense. I know that I already have seen advertising as part of video podcasts (and part of a podcast or two) which never bothers me. The way that this is presented in the article it sounds very unobtrusive.

Personally I'm up for anything that has the potential to increase the amount of content I can have on my device. I think it'd be awesome to be able to friend some of my favorite bands and get ad support content like they describe. I'd rather do it without the ads but since its opt-in I think if this is how they choose to do it then that works fine for me.