It sounds like Disqus ads are opt-in for publishers, who get a cut of the action, not just forcing ads for everyone. This sounds like a win-win-lose situation. Win for Disqus. Win for publishers. Lose for users who are sick of being bombarded with ads all the time.

I'm sure other big "comments" players are watching closely: Google+, Facebook, and Livefyre. I'm honestly surprised none of them have already rolled out something similar.

Maybe even Automattic will start pushing IntenseDebate again when they realize the revenue potential, which has taken a backseat ever since Jetpack. They've already dabbled with their own advertising platform with http://wordads.co/

If the above don't catch up and start offering their own revenue sharing model, we'll probably start seeing a mass adoption of Disqus on sites (that don't use it already, it's pretty popular as it is) that are already looking to maximize revenue in every way possible.