Will text ads provide an alternative to paying sites?
Several sites are starting to sell small text ads instead of banners or the almost-always-intrusive pop-this scroll-that click-to-kill new ad formats (phew!). Third-party providers, including The End of Free creator Evan Williams, even propose to manage these ad programs for your site. Will these ads, with their format more adapted to the web as we know it (aka. "not TV"), save the free web? Beside text vs. graphics, getting realistic about online ad pricing is part of the equation.