A plan by Disney to offer free TV content online is a glimpse the where advertising could get innovative. As I had been speculating, ad-supported content is coming to streaming and downloadble media, but it should not mimic the way advertising works in television. Faced with ad-killing DVR other time-shifting technologies, the only way to counter it is with technology, but not technology that punishes viewers, or technology that primarily interrupts content.

For the moment, according to Disney’s plan, interruption is not being addressed at all. Disney says "viewers will be able to pause and move between ‘chapters’ in an episode but will not be able to skip ads that are technically embedded."

Technically hardwiring ads is what TV did, and see how crippled that model is. Content sites should embed something we can never have enough of: choices. When a program break comes up, viewers should have the choice of earning credits for viewing the ad, or bypassing the ad but providing some feedback (taking a poll, commenting on the program etc). Then they could have a further incentive thrown in, to go back to the ad and watch it if they wished, to top up their credits even more. These credits could be then used to buy other content available online and not on regular TV. Or maybe previous episodes a viewer may have missed.

I’m talking of advertising being turned on its head, making it a currency, not an annoying bathroom break. Some third party vendor is surely going to come up with this currency system for many other online program interactions. A currency that could be banked and used like air miles. The point is, viewers and consumers (not marketers nor the media) are the final arbiters of the world’s most desired currency: attention.

Many agencies still dont realize that this is the area where creativity is in short supply. If they don’t get in and get creative, someone like iTunes or Google will.