Advertisers want accountability. Read a book review and buy the book, read about a celebrity's favorite designer and buy the latest frock, and so on. But this doesn't mean that we should adopt a TV-like model for the Web. But if we marketers and advertisers are going to effectively gain a share of consumers' attention, we're going to have to break into the attention stream. Sponsorships and email seem to work.
Advertorials seem to work.
Because they balance the users' need for control with the advertisers' need to break into the attention stream. Before we declare any model dead we need to remember that it took TV at least 20 years to truly begin to understand what works in the medium and what doesn't. We're still in the learning phase. Maybe banners work. Maybe they don't.