That was fast!

So fast, in fact, that it had already happened before I typed my first post: GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox have been bumping up their ad load for some time. But now they plan to accelerate that push. Here’s Will Richmond of VideoNuze:

Fox – Fox has begun selling 2 ads per “pod” and when prior 1 ad/pod campaigns expire, this will become the standard according to Bill Bradford, Fox’s SVP of Content Strategy. The pods could include one or two 30 second spots or mix in 15 second spots as well. They could even be a single 60 second spot for sole share of voice…

NBC – NBC has been quietly selling 2 ads/pod online for the last year-and-a-half according to Peter Naylor, NBCU’s SVP of Digital Media Sales, who said that about 30% of its streams now carry 2 ads/pod…

[NBC's target is] 50% of streams carrying 2 ads/pod by the end of this year (it was just 20% a year ago). Peter said that all of NBC’s research shows that the relevant metrics – favorability, recall, purchase intent, etc. – are unaffected by doubling up. I asked Peter whether he could see more than 2 ads/pod at some point and he said NBC would rather see more creativity and interactivity in the ads than push the quantity up further.

So there you go. If you’re watching Web video–doesn’t matter if it’s on your browser or on Apple’s (APPL) iPad–expect to see more ads in exchange for the free content.

Of course, paying for it doesn’t mean you’ll get it ad-free, anyway: Hulu Plus will be serving up spots to its $10-a-month customers, too.