I’ll answer the second part of the question first. I think some of the critics of ads in RSS have made very cogent and thoughtful arguments, and I think to ignore these arguments is unwise, because they are a part of the market. Which leads me to my answer to your first question: I think the market will decide what works. That sounds like a bailout answer, so I’ll elaborate.

Everything we do, we do for publishers. We only perform services on a feed that a publisher has asked for. Publishers are seeing more and more of their content consumed via feeds. Fine. Now, it is incumbent on us to provide a solution that the broad market accepts. If you find yourself in an environment in which you are playing a cat and mouse game with ad blocking utilities, the market has already spoken against you. That’s not to say some people won’t block ads. Of course they will. There will be arguments, debate, etc. But it is absolutely incumbent on us to help find the most subscriber-friendly way possible for publishers to monetize their content. I’m sure Google understands that X% of people block AdSense ads, and they recognize that if that number stays below some percentage then they have a solution that Y% of the market feels is ok, and they call that market acceptance. I don’t know how else you can approach the debate.

I think it would be woefully artificial for anybody to declare the market’s intentions at this point, and I mean that in both directions. There is one very healthy thing about this debate that is a bit different from other such debates, and it is that publishers and subscribers are frequently much closer to each other in this market, since so many more subscribers are also publishers in this market! That will foster healthy discussion and hopefully accelerate the speed with which the market reaches equilibrium.