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The word on the street (K Street) is that cash from 527 group coffers will start to flow online just as the broadcast ad ban hits, 60 days prior to the election. Dollars from these tax-exempt issue advocacy and voter mobilization organizations have already begun to trickle toward the 'Net, albeit tentatively. Prominent groups like America Coming Together and The Club for Growth, as well as lesser-knowns such as The Committee for the Advancement of Stem Cell Research, are poised to--or are currently running--Web ad campaigns.

Newspapers might be doing better than other media -- especially radio -- when it comes time for ad revenue growth, but that's not saying much. The torrent of ad revenue expected this year is turning out to be more of a trickle. According to a report released today by Goldman Sachs, investors are increasingly asking, "Where's the Beef?"

A study released this week by Consumer Health Sciences is the latest in a line promoting the value of pharmaceutical advertising, which has exploded in the 10 years since the federal government loosened rules about drug advertising. But it remains controversial, as critics have wondered whether the ads themselves generate demand instead of solving existing medical conditions.

The consumers who respond to DTC advertising score lower in physical and mental health and spend more money on prescriptions than the general population. Specifically, they're 29 percent more likely to have concurrent diseases, spend 21 percent more time going to the doctor's, and buy 29 percent more prescription drugs than the general population.

LIke hundreds of other media organizations that still use paper as the principal means to deliver news in an increasingly electronic world, Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times and the Spanish-language daily Hoy have been under pressure in recent years to maintain their readership and, ideally, increase it.

Yet few newspapers or magazines have acknowledged, as each of those newspapers did recently, that they falsely pumped up their circulation to convey the illusion of vitality to advertisers and investors.

The flurry of disclosures, coming less than a year after it was revealed in a New York courtroom that Gruner & Jahr USA Publishing had inflated the circulation of Rosie magazine, has prompted some worried questions from advertising executives and Wall Street analysts. They wonder if newspaper and magazine publishers are policing their circulation practices aggressively enough and if the longstanding measures to monitor accuracy are still sufficient in an increasingly competitive climate.

Internet advertising will continue its torrid pace over the next five years, more than doubling its market share to a projected $11.4 billion in 2008, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.