JUST CLICK TO BUY

By Janice Castro

The earth didn't move on Jan. 1, 1954, when NBC aired the tournament of Roses Parade from Pasadena, California -- the first national, commercially sponsored TV program broadcast in living color. In fact, most of the viewers in the 21 cities that carried the show could only imagine the colors, since virtually all TV sets then were still black-and-white. But it was a beginning. Within 20 years, not only did nearly every American home have a television set, but most of the sets were in color. Families were eating their dinner on trays in front of the TV rather than miss one minute of a show. Madison Avenue had found a powerful new tool that allowed it to reach huge numbers of consumers right in their homes. Advertising flowered with creativity, producing its own 60-second shows called commercials, building on copy written for print (``Wonder Bread helps build strong bodies 12 ways!'') and eventually creating new art forms with jingles (``It's the real thing''). The revenues ($35 billion a year by 1994) financed a vast new wave of entertainment and information programming, from Bonanza to live coverage of presidential election campaigns. Now it's happening again. A NEW MEDIUM has arrived, and it is bringing about a change in marketing that is potentially even more profound than the coming of television. As it reaches into the tens of millions, the number of computer users is suddenly attracting advertisers' attention. During the past few months alone, thousands of companies eager to reach this burgeoning audience of upscale consumers (estimated average income: $55,000) have begun advertising online.

Only a few years ago, most marketers were dismissing this audience as beyond the reach of advertising. Cyberspace, after all, was peopled by gearheads and techno-junkies fiercely opposed to any form of commercial intrusion. But as cyberspace grows, its population begins to approach mainstream. Most users now accept advertising -- in fact, research shows that many welcome it. As a group, though, they remain highly independent, primarily interested in seeking out useful information for themselves. Agencies are learning some NEW TRICKS, and the ad game may never be the same again. The computer medium turns traditional big-brand advertising on its head. No longer is it enough to deliver a simple message that appeals to everyone -- to say in sweeping terms to a mass audience, ``Buy this car ((or beer, or soap, or airline ticket)) and get this life.'' Online consumers talk back. They demand instant information. The moment they lose interest, one click of the computer mouse, and they are gone. There is no lingering until the show comes back on. In order to hold their attention, advertisers are developing ``interactive'' advertising that delivers the message in successive layers as part of a DIALOGUE with the consumer. Once the individual shows interest in the initial pitch, the interactive advertiser moves to the next stage, which delivers a message designed specifically for that customer. Club Med, for example, quickly sorts Net surfers who happen upon their richly illustrated Internet HOME PAGE into separate categories by inviting them to answer a few questions at the outset. Prospective vacationers with families proceed to one online brochure, while SINGLES seeking to meet new friends, or people who are seeking a resort that features scuba diving, are steered to other presentations, all of them studded with color pictures of beaches and happy vacationers -- and lots of facts. Thanks to the new technology online, a highlighted phrase or a color photograph can serve as a doorway: CLICK ON IT, and you are transported to another realm of information. The payoff for this complex sales effort is that the advertiser gains an unprecedented opportunity to tailor the message precisely to the individual customer and give consumers as much information as they desire.

Interactive advertising presents special challenges, though. There is no equivalent online version, for example, of the prime-time network television shows or the leading national publications that gather huge numbers of people to look at a of well-placed message from a sponsor. The main challenge for marketers is in learning how to attract a sizable audience in the diffuse landscape of cyberspace. Going online is like driving alone from place to place along previously unmapped roads, occasionally zooming off in a new direction on impulse. This is particularly true on the Internet, with its vast frontier of ISOLATED SITES. Travelers tend to dart about, unseen, on a spider web of electronic back roads. Says Mark Loncar, a vice president for CKS Pictures, a hot online ad shop in Cupertino, California: ``People go online for information, not for entertainment. They're more targeted, more focused.'' Interactive marketers must convince these independent cruisers to come take a look at their messages.

One way is to erect signposts on those back roads. until recently, there was nothing like a directory to guide consumers around the Net. Now there are all kinds of directories available, from shopping listings to business-to- business directories. Online shopping centers are springing up everywhere, inviting customers to use their credit cards to buy on impulse, without even leaving their chairs. Since opening its interactive doors last October, Cybermalls, a Vermont shopping center with nearly 60 ONLINE BUSINESSES ranging from a coffee store to a marine equipment shop, has built up bustling traffic, in part, by offering free information on SKI CONDITIONS and vacation resorts.

The most popular products sold online are what one industry expert calls the ``distance stuff,'' such as books, software, outdoor gear, packaged foods and collectibles, that people can buy without needing to touch them or try them on. These are the same products, in fact, that Americans normally buy through mail-order catalogs, which rang up $57 billion in sales last year. Craig Gugel, senior vice president for interactive media for Ted Bates in New York City, compares the present state of online advertising with the early days of cable TV, just before its rapid growth during the mid-1980s. Says Gugel: ``Interactive media is going to explode over the next five to 10 years. Online advertising is out there now, but interactive television is coming next.''

So far, though, most online advertising is being produced by small shops, while the big agencies that produce most of America's advertising watch nervously from the sidelines. In February, Raymond Smith, chief executive officer of Bell Atlantic, told advertising professionals in Manhattan that the big agencies had better get serious about interactive advertising, or someone else will get the work. ``You can jump in early and help create this exciting new medium,'' he said, ``or you can let the world pass you by, and find yourself operating the best darned buggy-whip business on Madison Avenue.'' Smith's warning followed a rocket from Edwin Artzt, chairman of Procter & Gamble, the largest U.S. advertiser. Last year Artzt told agencies that unless Madison Avenue gets its interactive act together, companies like his will find other ways to tell consumers about their PRODUCTS. Manufacturers are already diverting advertising dollars to direct marketing; many see the online medium as a way to expand such efforts. The arrival of two-way television will raise the stakes even more. If interactive-TV systems fulfill expectations, viewers as independent as today's Net surfers will be able to travel not just to Websites on flat-panel computer screens but also into home theaters filled with ganglia-tingling news, entertainment and shopping options that they can choose with the flick of a remote-control button. Madison Avenue's big challenge will then be to get consumers to use that same remote-control device to buy an airline ticket to Club Med and, eventually, even a car.

--With reporting by Robertson Barrett/New York and David S. Jackson/San Francisco

With reporting by ROBERTSON BARRETT/NEW YORK AND DAVID S. JACKSON/SAN FRANCISCO