There’s a good article about online advertising in the latest Business Week magazine. A topic that bloggers and investors alike should be very interested in. Here are a few snippets:

A year ago, media buyers could land discounted space on the home pages of major portals for between $100,000 and $180,000 per 24 hours, say buyers. Now, the cost is reaching $300,000. Forget about discounts.

The importance of Internet advertising extends far beyond the numbers. Now that advertisers have their hands on a tool that measures an ad’s effectiveness, they’re starting to press other media for similar accountability. It’s a process sure to cause disruptions. Take TV. For decades, Nielsen Media Research has been providing reports on how many customers watch a specific program. But in a nation full of TiVo Inc. (TIVO ) zappers and channel surfers, how many are actually seeing the ads?

The question is whether the search industry will continue to pace the growth of Internet advertising. eMarketer predicts that growth of such search ads in the U.S. could slow from 55% this year to 19% in 2005. This poses little problem for Yahoo, a powerhouse in both arenas. But Google risks missing out on growth in brand ads. The reason? Advertisers and agencies traditionally separate the direct-marketing teams, which feed into search, from the creative and brand teams that oversee display ads. For now, Google is attempting to bridge the gap by developing ads with images and pictures to accompany search results.

While smaller targeted sites reach niche audiences, most of the crush for branding campaigns is for megasites — and many advertisers get crowded out. “We called MSN to run some video for Adidas,” says Sarah Fay, president of Carat Interactive Inc., a Boston media buyer. “They gave us one day in November, and it was on a weekend.” The squeeze is so severe that advertisers in the hottest segments of the market — autos, finance, and entertainment — are gobbling up prime video slots months in advance. Within a year or two, industry insiders expect this buying to evolve into an Internet version of the TV industry’s annual up-front sales.