As usual, Danny Sullivan is able to inject some commonsense into the hype-filled discussions about the power and promise of social advertising.

Advertisers in search aren’t hoping they’ll be less in the way than in other forms of media. Advertisers in search are eagerly sought solutions.

Search isn’t the real problem. There is a very wide and (today) relatively unprofitable, annoying space between search advertising (which appears to work pretty well: it certainly is profitable!) and online display advertising. I’m looking forward to seeing some additional innovation out there in the way that publishers design their sites and their advertising. The banner isn’t going away just yet, but whether it is new advertising units or the next generation targeting solution, 0.1% clickthrough rates and annoyed users will not be able to persist for too much longer.