The Nieman Journalism Lab says that advertising on tablet media apps is wildly successful so far:

* $50 CPMs ($50 per each one thousand views) for USA Today’s iPad ad, as compared to maybe $10 for its web ads.
* Irrational exuberance! Brian Quinn, WSJ’s VP/general manager for digital ad sales, says overall ad spend is increasing because of the iPad version, not just switching dollars from one platform to another. “Out of the gate, there was an exuberance about this,” he says.
* Chase Sapphire, which is a New York Times iPad sponsor, says its ads are getting a remarkable 15 percent clickthrough rate. That’s 150 times the rate of an average web ad.

I don't think that the future of American print media can entirely be found in advertising, (this review discusses a couple of books that try to imagine solutions for American journalism and media) but it's good to see that something, at least, seems to be working. If the tablet computer really takes off, users have already proven on the ground floor that they're not resistant to the idea of advertising subsidizing some of the content.