If the message is indeed the medium, sometimes it's hard to understand what the Internet is saying, particularly to marketers and advertisers. While traditional media's ad models have proven successful for generations, it's becoming clear that transposing formats developed for a passive TV or radio experience onto the Internet, whose reason d'etre is interactivity, is simply not the best way to reach consumers-particularly kids. For advertisers, the Internet is a paradox of huge untapped potential; although it reaches millions instantly, it's often hard to know if you're really reaching the target audience in the way intended.

"IF you can really define [the reach of a web ad], then you are doing a real targeted buy and chances are it's much less expensive than a print buy in a major magazine or a broadcast buy on television," says Glen Ross, president of Artisan Family Home Entertainment. "But it's very slipshod right now-you don't know who you're going to get or when you're going to get them."

Because of the current soft on-line advertising market, Matt Turner, VP of advertising sales and business development for Fox Kids and Fox Family, says that even though "the web makes sense for everybody on a promotional level, companies are less likely to put aside 5% to 10% of their overall ad budgets for the Internet because it's not totally proven. You can't say it drives sales like TV does. Hopefully that day will come soon, but until it does, we're trying to be as creative as we possibly can."

Meanwhile independent sites are being crushed by the lack of advertising revenue. "If you look at the whole Internet landscape, the independents are going out of business like crazy," says Turner, who points to Zeeks.com as another recent casualty. "The only reason why there are any indies still around is because they are owned by bigger companies with deep pockets. There's no way they can keep it running unless they have something other than ad revenue."

Although the Internet has not become the advertising promised-land independents originally hoped it would be, Jessica Halem, marketing manager of Freezone.com, believes indies can still be profitable via advertising, but only by setting modest goals. "Figure out what you have to offer and do that," she says. And in terms of why indie sites can be of vital importance to marketers, Halem notes: "I might not have 18 million unique visitors, but I guarantee you the 500,000 to one million kids who come here every month are invested in the site because we've taken the time to actually cultivate that audience instead of just throwing a net out."

Although there's no clear consensus on what marketing format works best, most believe the inherently interactive nature of the Internet is best utilized with an integrated approach. Here are some examples of web ad formats currently being used:

Stand-alone product sites

These sites work best for branded products that kids already have an interaction with, such as video games. Says Dan Owsen, on-line manager for Pokémon.com, "The purpose of the site is to extend the brand and get people excited about Pokémon, and also to provide a place for official news about products and games-related announcements."

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