are sponsor blogs legit?

so asks scott karp as he considers sponsor advertising for his own blog. i answer with an emphatic yes.

scott presents the two major formats: advertiser-created and blogger created, and leans toward the former as the only viable possibility.

and they are miles ahead of any sort of keyword-targeted advertising google might come up with. as a reader, i'm not interested in keywords; i'm interested in topics & articles. to be honest, i'm not even against adverts all that much as long as i'm not forced to pay attention. as i'm j-rattling through my google reader and i find an interesting post (sponsor or otherwise) i'm likely to check it out further. if i'm not interested, then so what? i wouldn't have been interested regardless of where the advertising was.

and you have to agree with him that "commercial-free content is an unrealistic expectation for any publisher/reader relationship" and breakfast, lunch & dinner have to come from somewhere.