Got a short little span of attention....

Techdirt has been banging on about this for a long time, and I agree 100%.

Ads are content.

More than that, ads are probably a very big part of what people are going to watch in the future. People have very short spans of attention, and adverts are produced specifically to cater for it.
If TV is going to be personal, and I think it is, then it will be delivered in much the same way that music is right now.

• Shorts, or adverts will become the most viewed content
• 'playlists' or schedules will be shared between people
• people will increasingly move away from 'corporate packaged' playlists - equivalent of an album in music
• viral marketing will far outweigh placement (i.e. make your ads funny!)
• Some of the most seriously valuable content will be old adverts, outtakes from films/series, old news and disaster reports

Adverts will no longer need crap sitcoms to 'carry' them, they can exist in their own right. Placing your adverts in the places where the 'viral fire' will burn most fiercely will be pretty good skill to have.

Media buying has never been such fun!