Forever, advertising has been disruptive. Commercials break-in on your favorite TV show, movie theaters now make you wait 30+ minutes to watch 7 commercials before the feature starts and radio personalities actually try to convince you that they lost weight with some silly diet pill in between radio songs.

The web isn’t much different. Banner ads are stuck in your face where key content should be, video sites (like CNN or ESPN) require you to sit through 8 - 20 second commercials before “consuming” content and some magazine sites require you to click on the ad before continuing to the content.

The user is getting really sick of this (introduce YouTube, XM Radio, Tivo and the like).

A web site I blogged about yesterday, Pandora.com, handles advertisements in a totally different way-a way that I not only don’t mind (yeah, that was a double negative), but in such a way that actually enhances the experience. Pandora integrates their advertisers right into their design. You’ll have to go there to check it out. (I promise, I get paid nothing for this.)

The web moral of the story: Your users want control, and they don’t want disruptions. Just let them do what they came to do. You’ll have happier (and more) users. That I promise as well.