Among all the coverage of the BBC job cuts, there is also news on the issue of advertising on BBCNews.com.

Slipped into the bottom of the MediaGuardian story on the cuts is a small paragraph:

The BBC deputy director general, Mark Byford, also confirmed that the BBC Trust has given approval for advertisements on BBC.com

There was an air of inevitability about this. BBC Worldwide has been trying to push this through for more than a year, and BBC News were tempted by the prospect of additional funds. It means that international readers of the BBC News website will have to get used to ads surrounding the news. Pre-roll ads are already running on BBC News video.

UPDATE: The BBC Editors’ blog has a post explaing the rationale for the advertising. The ads will start appearing on high-traffic pages from next month. The comments make for interesting reading, with many unhappy about seeing the commercialisation of the news on the BBC.

The irony is that many people now use plugins like AdBlock Plus to strip out the ads.