Mac Rumors: Apple Selling Ads on iTunes?

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In a deal that should bring in several hundred million dollars off the bat, the company will run ads, most notably on its iTunes store.

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An AdAge article from April 2006 indicated that Apple was looking into publishing ads while users listen to podcasts:

Apple's [April 2006] plans call for the ads to appear only in the lower-left corner of the iTunes library while users listen to podcasts from their computers rather than from portable devices.

I think I said at some point that I'd never put ads on this blog. Surprisingly, many people have come to this blog to get some esoteric issue solved, like fixing their ArcIMS License Manager connection. I probably could have gotten .1% of them to click on some Google ad. This would have made me a high quality nickel.

Yet I've thrown that nickel -- and the curiousity of seeing if anyone would actually click ads on this site -- away to keep my proverbial idealistic cachet. I may change my mind yet, but so far, cachet, and the fact that I said "No New Taxes," has kept 'em off.

Apple's mini music store ad window in iTunes was bad enough. How long before iTunes becomes as tacky as the ad-supported version of Limewire?

Look, you can't be the BMW of audio devices and paste sponsor stickers all over the car. You can't even slap on a Harley-Davidson emblem. No, then you're not tastefully cool, but another obvious sellout. And then so are the people using your products. Obviously being The [Capitalist] Man is not hip; subtly being The Man is. That's called "style."

Don't alienate your mp3 users. You might just open the door for another player on the desktop, and iTunes will just be a way to move things to the iPod, until something better comes along. Aren't the relatively subtle arrows on each song (note how the number of visible arrows grew x2 in the latest version of iTunes?) enough?