After a brief period when it seemed that anything was possible and interactivity would create an entirely new type of programming, something even sexier than television, the Net ran into the reality of slow downloads and limited attention spans. People lost interest. It's been a dramatic shift in the last year. One of the promises of the Web was to be a worldwide concourse for pamphleteers, making non-mainstream content widely available. And there are signs that it has successfully done just that.
Traffic is traffic.
We're living through a period of eyeball-capturing, and if you capture enough eyeballs, advertisers are going to be interested. Today, many independent Web publishers say they have audiences surpassing those of mainstream print publications, in many cases without spending a dime to promote themselves. Rising ad tide And a steady rise in advertiser interest in the Web means that there are more chances today for small online content producers to turn those audience figures into dollar signs. The site, which recently merged with the similar, but non-commercial, Estronet , is focused on material by and for women. ChickClick's Swanson says the sites get between 1.5 and 2 million unique visitors a month, and the advertising inventory continues to expand as ChickClick and Estronet add more content to their collection.