It's no more a conflict of interest than accepting ads for movies I hate, is it? I had The Goods plastered all over this site for about three weeks, but it didn't make that a better movie. However, on a lot of those Google ads, they're keyword driven by the page's content, so if I write something about a movie trailer, you might see an ad for a company that sells tractor trailers.

My only policies on an ad are really that it's not offensive to the eyes or ears. Tough to manage a lot of them because they come through third-party sources into my ad networks, which also have their own campaigns, but whenever I get one of those "Click Here to Win a Free iPod!" flashy ads, I always try to track it down and remove it. I've even pulled one of the highest-paying ads I've ever accepted, a full-pager that loaded in advance of homepage content, just because readers complained.

So I always do my best to keep the advertising at a certain level while also maintaining some kind of structure that makes it (marginally) profitable. But do I think Netflix ads are a conflict? No. I accept ads from the studios all the time and dislike more movies than I like, so I don't believe it taints the coverage to any degree.