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I think the closest parallel may be websites that are paid for by Google ads. I do see advertising as an interesting potential way to fund books. The trick would be to find a way to estimate "eyeballs" or the viewership audience, which is generally key to determining advertising rates and author/publisher compensation. TV in the US estimates this with viewership surveys. Newspapers and magazines publish their subscription and individual sales figures. Wowio does it by asking customers to subscribe to their site and only download their own books, not pass them around to others. Another idea would be to have a ping-back function in an ebook reader that would let the advertising service (e.g. Google Ads) know that the ad had been on the screen. Privacy concerns are likely to nix that one, but it would have the advantage of actually encouraging publishers to be sure their formats were open and easily transported, because they would want every work to be as widely distributed and viewed as possible.
I don't like television ads, to the point that yes, I actually have completely given up on commercial television, for over 10 years. But I tolerate print ads in magazines, etc., and in some magazines, I actually take time to read them, because they're relevant to the reason I'm reading the magazine, e.g. jewelry supply ads in my jewelry design magazines, or tech tool ads in MAKE.
When reading a fiction book, I wouldn't want anything to interrupt the flow of the story, but a banner or text ad at the end of a chapter would be fine, and if they advertised books or other works that I might like based on the current book, I think I'd even appreciate them.
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