Editor's Note: This is Part Two of our look at possible ways online content can survive in today's economy. Part One was called, 'Will Microads Save Online Content?'

The e-mail slithers into the inbox like a spammer's message ? unannounced. It's from a favorite sports Web site, though. The Web-surfer checks it out.

The e-mail loads ? and explodes with light and sound as a Flash video clip plays, a race car roaring around a track, just like, well, like a television commercial.

That?s what 40,000 ESPN.com fans can expect from an ad campaign in coming months.

The advertising format is so new that many companies don?t have a name, and there is no recognized industry term for them. 'Emmercials' is probably as descriptive as anything. E-mail commercials may be recent but they have the pizzazz and response rates to ignite the world of online advertising, business studies predict. They might even make content sites more profitable.

After all, even if businesses have slashed their online advertising by half in 2001 over last year, the result will still be $4.1 billion that advertisers will spend on banners, emmercials and other Internet ads this year, says a PricewaterhouseCoopers study. That?s a potent enough reason to be on the cutting edge of online advertising.

Right now, emmercials and their cousins, commercials that play between Web pages (sometimes called 'superstitials,' or 'interstitials'), account for a tiny percentage of online advertising sales. Nonetheless, some large firms have uploaded these 20-second online commercials, including McDonald?s and HBO. This spring, for example, Amazon fired off emmercials to 40,000 customers to promote the release of Charlie?s Angels on DVD and VHS, according to a Business Week story.

The essence of an emmercial, says Tom Daugherty, senior vice president of marketing for programming company Roguewave, is its mix of images combined with an effective pitch. Daugherty displayed on his PC a state university emmercial that Roguewave programmers created.

In it, a football player runs across a green field, catching a football while thousands of fans cheer. The college logo flashes on screen, and the emmercial ends with a link to the school?s ticket office. Universities using this technology can energize thousands of alumni for the homecoming game, he says ? just like companies can energize customers and, perhaps, news sites can do the same for their readers.

'We engage, because I grab hold of you with some music, some action. And I inform you. And at the end, there?s a call to action,' explains Daugherty.

'This is flat text,' he says, shaking a print-out of a regular, text e-mail message he?d received. A text e-mail, he says, can convey the same information as an emmercial, but it?s boring. An emmercial, by contrast, grabs viewers by the eyeballs and charms their ears, adding dimensions that are undeniably attention-getting.

Emmercials need not always be television-style, with flashy lights and sound, to catch Web surfers? attention. Consider a series of Advil online ads created by Unicast. 'Take control of running pain with Advil,' declares the ad?s opening window (there are also gardening and golf versions of the ad).

On the window are choices of common sources of running pain, like shin splints, that open up other windows with diagrams of stretches that help prevent that pain ? in conjunction with Advil, of course.

It?s a smart, simple ad that actually gives surfers information they want in an interactive format that only the Internet can offer.

Between the two emmercial approaches ? television-like glitz and interactive bundles of windows ? many marketers believe emmercials offer online advertising a much-needed shot in the arm.

'We?re not really going for the interactive marketing space, and we?re not really going for buttons and banners. That really is a different industry,' says Blair Lyon, CEO of the online creative company TMX. 'What we?re trying to demonstrate is that there is an untapped media channel that?s out there and available. It has a billion viewers on it, it really has only one station, and it?s on 24/7.'

Effective Marketing vs Technology

Despite their glamour and vitality, emmercials have not caught fire as easily as some of their creators had hoped. This summer, pioneering firm Radical Communication ran out of money, and in September was acquired by MindArrow. But observers such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau say such problems are often the result of a focus on technology over marketing, and that the emmercial ? whether via e-mail or between Web pages ? is an ad style that continues to smolder, slowly gaining heat and buzz.

It?s tough to ignore an emmercial that costs a fraction of a television commercial -- just a few thousand dollars -- while delivering a similar impact to 30,000 or 40,000 clients. Daugherty and others cite industry response rates as high as 35 percent to an emmercial, compared to just 1 or 2 percent for direct mail.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an industry group of mostly Web sites that publishes online ad standards, released studies this summer declaring Flash ads, like online commercials, 'increased branding metrics by an average of 71 percent.'

That means the average Web surfer remembers the substance of an emmercial and its sponsor ? Honda or Coca-Cola or whichever ? almost twice as consistently as a banner or button.

Emmercials, especially jazzed up e-mails, still face technical hurdles, though. Not all browsers can read them. But since emmercials only need send only a small initial message they do not clog inboxes which is also one of their strong selling points.

But for computer users stuck with modem connections in the 28k- or 56k-range, some videos don?t always play smoothly.

Unicast gets around technical limitations by designing its Web commercials to load entirely in the background and play when ready, instead of sending them to the viewer via streaming video. It?s a consistent message that every viewer sees identically, regardless of their computer?s or modem?s speed, she notes.

Lyon says: 'I don?t want to think or know about the infrastructure required, the servers, the billions of dollars of equipment that?s required to deliver that broadcast to me. So, I think the challenge for companies like ours is to do that seamlessly. To do that as seamlessly as television or radio.'

There?s an attitude problem, too.

Too many Netizens, especially those putting up Web pages, think technology is an end in itself, says Allie Shaw, vice president of marketing at Unicast. Programmers write codes, she says, but they often fail to properly understand effective marketing. So online companies that fizzle out,'are those that have technological solutions, not advertising solutions that they back up with technology.'

'The thing that frustrates users, if you look at all the data,' contends Shaw, 'is not the fact that they?re being exposed to advertising. It?s advertising that slows them down, it?s the advertising that blows up their browser.'

Other Web surfers and e-mail users may increasingly see online commercials though most haven?t. They?re new, of course, but also primarily permission-based.

While debt consolidation and penile implant marketers throw text e-mails at any address they can find, the Charles Schwabs and ESPNs hesitate to spend money for a quality online commercial campaign only to send it to the wrong people, marketers say. 'There?s really no getting around building your own database,' says TMX?s Lyon.

Creative Ads and Creative Content

Achieving a consistent, creative message is the central challenge for online advertisers and emmercial programmers, industry sources said.

And no one knows whether Internet viewers will flock to content Web sites with emmercials, turn away or what their response to e-newsletters with emmercials might be.

The IAB, says CEO Greg Stuart, is beginning to study these new questions. Meanwhile, industry experts have a few suggestions for Web site creators. With emmercials, Web sites can promote themselves like TV news stations with broadcast ads about their central features and value, they say.

Suppose 'I built the best, most powerful site ever but I?m not convincing people to get there just by sending out direct mail or advertising in a newspaper or sending out a text-based e-mail, because they don?t understand the power of what I?m doing. So I want to be able to show them ? I can send out tailored snippets or trailers [via emmercial] of what they can see at the bigger site,' says Lyon. 'If you get something that?s cool enough or relevant enough that people want to share it with their friends, you can build a database very quickly.'

Once readers are at the site, says Unicast?s Shaw, site creators can place emmercials to channel traffic to certain pages. Also, sites can create emmercials to tell readers how important their loyalty is and to encourage registration, perhaps in conjunction with other features, like an e-newsletter. By getting to know its reader demographic, Shaw says, a content site develops a stronger attraction for paying advertisers.

Smaller sites with well-defined and proven demographics can compete for major ad dollars with brand companies, says Shaw. 'I think one of the things smaller sites suffer from is they haven?t marketed their audience; they?ve marketed their content.'

IAB?s Stuart notes that in the end, the viability of emmercials will be based on the average Web-surfer?s reactions. They will vote with their wallets, and, as in print or broadcast, those votes go to content that people find valuable.

Cutting edge ads and larger ad budgets ? the lifeblood of content sites ? will drift towards the sites with consistent surfer demand. 'Ultimately, what makes media work is content, and the journalism behind that content,' says Stuart.

Yet Lyon concedes, it may be only a matter of time before the genie?s out of the bottle, and spammers are sending out TV-commercial like junk e-mail. Already, TMX has had to turn away customers intent on 'really invasive, obnoxious types of messaging.'