NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Given how many ads already bombard sports fans, it's impressive there was enough outrage left out there to turn back a plan to hype the "Spider-Man 2" movie on the bases used in major league games.

But even if you hate the ad blitz at the nation's stadiums and arenas, don't get too excited about Spidey's retreat. The victory is at best a temporary one.

Even if we don't see on-field or on-uniform ads soon, that day is coming.

Spider-Man 2 ads won't appear on bases in major league game next months, but they will be in the on-deck circles and elsewhere in the stadiums.

Columbia Pictures agreed to drop plans to have 4-inch square ads planned for the center of the bases, although it will go ahead with plans for ads on the stadium scoreboards and video screens, as well as the on deck circles during the games on June 11 through 13. Company executives said they didn't want to anger any fans and that the on-field ads were only a small part of the marketing effort with baseball.

Everyone from a U.S. Senate candidate to Ralph Nader took time to weigh in against the Spider-Man deal. But one sports executive told me the deal collapsed as much due to lack of support among teams who were angry about Major League Baseball selling space in their parks without the proper consultation. The New York Yankees, not exactly a team to run away from advertising revenue, had already announced it would not participate in the arrangement.

The fact is that teams are always weighing how best to get the greatest advertising revenue from the available space around the stadium and parks. And now they're about to get a new tool to sell those ads.

Nielsen will be charting how much exposure stadiums signs get on game broadcasts.

Nielsen Sports, the unit of the television ratings service, is starting a pilot program to measure how much air time and viewership each ad gets during the course of a game broadcast. Eventually it will plans to also chart the amount of exposure the ads see on programs such as ESPN's SportsCenter and other highlight shows.

Barbara Zidovsky, Nielsen's senior vice president of sports marketing, said she expects eventually to be able to say which stadium or arena sign was the most widely seen during the course of a year. What the service will likely mean is more ads, and more money for the ads that get air time, said Zidovsky.

"What a lot of clubs have asked us is to focus on certain areas where they have no signs," she said. "It's going to give them more of valuation of what they can charge for that space."

Chuck Steedman, senior director or business services for the Boston Red Sox, said it's a myth that stadiums are more overrun with ads now than they used to be. He said the team's famous Green Monster in left field was covered with ads until 1941.

The Boston Red Sox added their first ads to Fenway Park's famous Green Monster in more than 60 years last season.

Last year, when it expanded the scoreboard on that wall, the team restored ads to the landmark piece of Fenway Park. Steedman said the idea "had been discussed here every year since they took them off the wall."

But he says the team has drawn the line at just the two ads, plus a sign promoting its charity, the Jimmy Fund. Even if the new Nielsen service can quantify how much ads elsewhere on the wall might be worth, he doesn't anticipate a change.

"The center of Green Monster would be a tantalizing piece of real estate for any advertiser," he said. "You don't need a new technology or a new metric to tell you that."

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Still, sports marketing consultant Marc Ganis believes quantifying exposure is a step along the path to eventually seeing on-field ads, although he doesn't expect it in the near term.

Ganis said the new Nielsen service ups the pressure to sell new kinds ads. "After this Spider-Man situation, "We're seeing such a backlash, the field itself, within the foul lines . . . [should] remain fairly sacrosanct," he said. "But everything else will be fair game."

Players wearing sponsor patches will likely come in the future, according to experts in the field, although the various players' unions will probably be the most effective barrier to an immediate change.

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Still, the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays wore a Ricoh logo on their batting helmets during the two-game season opening series they played in Japan this year to recognize the Japanese copier maker's support of the financial support of trip.

"It's the proverbial leak in the dike," said sports broadcasting consultant Neal Pilson. "Does that (Japan trip) make it more likely? Yes."