It’s a similar story at Cheezburger Network, home of funny cat photo site ICanHasaCheezburger, Failblog and other humor sites. Chief revenue officer Todd Sawicki would love to get out of selling banner ads altogether. Instead, he sees the role of its network to help brands connect with consumers in different ways.

“Digital publishers are creating platforms for brands so they can publish their own content,” he said. “Our job as the platform creater is not to create the generic platform, but to act as the manager, the referee, to help the brands do a better job.”

It’s no mistake that at both Cheezburger and Buzzfeed editors are heavily involved in the creation of the content advertising on their sites. This is a pattern repeated on other publishers in the form of sponsored posts on Gawker, The Huffington Post and even Forbes.

It could be that it’s not that brands don’t love the Web, it’s that they don’t love the Web’s standard display advertising. For now, the march of consumer attention online is a tide lifting all boats, but that might not last. Most of online adveritsing’s gains have come at the expense of print, which can only decline so much. The much-heralded assault on TV dollars hasn’t happened and won’t anytime soon. That could end up meaning trouble for the display ad business down the road.