On Monday Night NBC Nightly News aired just one minute and thirty seconds of commercials for the entire newscast, sponsored solely by Philips. The rest of the time: Extra coverage.

The response: Unadulterated love. (Well, perhaps adulterated by MSNBC, but you get the point.)

What's this have to do with online video? Muchas muchas. As advertisers flock to online, their chosen destinations are sites like YouTube, videobloggers like Ze Frank and Galacticast, and news shows like Rocketboom. And what models are those sites and shows choosing? Single advertiser sponsorships.

Several reasons for this: The videobloggers have a small amount of inventory but a very loyal audience, making single sponsorships more attractive to advertisers. And of course videocasts don't really have commercials per se, making sponsorship deals more feasible.

Sure, videoblogs aren't TV, but as the online world grows, we'll only become more accustomed to that interactive experience. What we're seeing right now is the confluence of online and offline viewing paradigms, at least as far as advertising goes. We're getting used to the idea of sponsored content again.

Remind you of anything? Yep, the halcyon days of television, when it was common practice for an advertiser like, say, Campbell's Soup, to sponsor an entire program.

They say that advertising is America's own folk art. That's an anachronism. Advertising is now the admixture of reality. Good news? Bad news? Do we even notice it happening? Ask Kent from Rocklin, California, who e-mailed NBC after the sponsorship test.

"It's about time a network step up to its responsibility for public service, and NBC has taken the lead here."

There you have it. Corporate sponsorship = public service. What a world.