The global network of computer networks is rapidly rushing into the arms of advertisers as the means to underwrite the Net and turn it into a commercially viable entity. Two years ago, the Internet was largely the province of university students, computer companies and defense contractors. Today, it is the playing ground for millions of people, with the numbers growing at an exponential rate.
Organizations that push content onto the Internet are learning that to both pay their bills and meet the public's demand for ''free'' information means that the only way to make ends meet is to insert paid advertisements. ''It's 100 percent of our revenue model right now, and that's true of most sites,'' says Andrew Anker, president of HotWired, the on-line version of Wired magazine.
Advertisements on HotWired appear throughout the service at the beginning of each section, as well as on HotWired's ''home page'' - the first page that users see when they sign on. Most advertisements consist of a small picture, either at the top or the bottom of the screen, which the user can click upon to receive more information about a company or a product. Advertisements cost $15,000 a month and are viewed roughly 100,000 times, says Anker.
Others are counting on those advertising dollars as well. Mark Torrence is a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, but he also runs a site on the WorldWide Web that charts the past performance of 350 stocks on the stock market. It's information that's in high demand, and lately Torrence's Web site (http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks/) has been getting 140,000 and 150,000 ''hits'' per day.
A hit merely means a user clicked on page, and since some users may click multiple times, the number of hits does not equal the number of users.
The popularity is pushing Torrence's ability to handle the traffic with the technology he currently uses. His answer: ''We are going to try an advertising model, still making the data free for people to grab.''
Torrence says that his service plans to charge advertisers a set fee for a certain number of ''hits,'' or viewings on people's screens.
''The prices for ads on the Web range from $20 per thousand screen views to somewhere around $45 or $50 per 1,000. We are trying to price ourselves somewhere in the middle.''
He expects that his company will clear a million dollars in its first year.