Free product, no 'annoying' advertising: Can Web 2.0 'consumers' have it all?

The 19-year-old University of Georgia sophomore enjoys looking at sports reports and entertainment news, watching as many as seven to eight videos a day.

What he doesn't enjoy: Having to sit through "pre-rolls," the commercials that precede many Web videos. ‘It's really annoying to have to wait 10 to 20 seconds to see a commercial when you are trying to get away from that by not watching TV,’ Mr. Abelsky says.

Robert Scoble concurs in “Video advertising pisses off audience? Who knew? Heheh” and extols the virtues of "smart" sponsorship dollars over "stupid video advertising" dollars:

This is why I appreciate the sponsorship of my ScobleShow that Seagate paid for. They aren’t asking me to run stupid video advertising, like the Wall Street Journal talks about today, that pisses off my audience. I don’t get why companies try to force their brands down our throats. There’s a lot better way to get adoption than by doing that. Heck, you get more good feelings by supporting the community (like what Yahoo did last week by getting Beck to play a free concert) than by buying stupid interruptive advertising.

In addition to companies footing the bill for free-to-the-consumer concerts, Scoble also supports companies footing the bill for free to-the-consumer product samples, such as “giving free wine to bloggers.”

Scoble notes the importance of ROI, but what is the ROI from getting “more good feelings by supporting the community”? Will a sponsor benefit from “good feelings” only until the next sponsoring company puts on an even bigger and better free concert to “support the community”?

In “Web 2.0 Bill of Rights: free content, users control, Websites are public goods” I discuss Web 2.0 risks. The risks I put forth, however, are not the risks of offending users of free-to-the-consumer Web 2.0 services with "annoying" advertising, but the risks of succumbing to Web 2.0 conventional advertising wisdom:

The Bill of Rights has NOT been amended to reflect Web 2.0 conventional wisdom that:

1) content owners have no right to compensation,

2) non-paying users of commercial services control decision making at the services,

3) Web 2.0 properties are public goods, not private enterprises, and exist as Web 2.0 “philanthropies” to provide free content and services to the Web 2.0 “community.”