Among the flying elbows and knees striking out in the fight to win the minds of media buyers for increased budget share, more and more of these jabs are directed at online media, rather than the delicate bits of network TV budgets. Even the highly rancorous radio industry has banded together to release a study showing their medium's superiority in certain measures. The $5 million dollar effort comes as the main players in the field realize that their most dangerous competition isn't so much other radio companies as firms bringing other media to their audience. Magazine publishers started a $40 million similar media effort, which might be partly hobbled by the fact that most of that money is being spent on print.

Interestingly, the three media most concerned and most organized - radio, magazines and newspapers - are also the three that have the lion's share of local advertising revenues. Aside from direct response budgets, these budgets are the most threatened by online media. CNN reports a major newspaper trade group is working on research and positioning so that newsprint sales forces can use their sales calls to harp on a common message.

Online media firms could also be said to be pushing a common effort, although perhaps one less centralized. Their pitches have been honed by the process of boom and bust in a new market, but the common message coming out is less one of the higher relative value of online impressions and one more of the impression that it is inexorably taking over billions of dollars of traditional media share. It is unignorable more because of its increasing ubiquity and the now-large girth of its market power.