ou know the feeling. Slugging around cyberspace, waiting for the next 'so-cool!' home page to load up and blow your mind out. Fabulous graphics are awaiting, it promises. Those textured backgrounds.... mmmmm... textured backgrounds! It's so cool isn't it! It really is!! Well, not really.

The plain truth is, that waiting for a graphic intensive web page to appear on your computer screen is painfully torturing. Even on a 28.8k modem, it really is a rather tedious (and most often, worthless) way to experience the possibilities of the information (yes, you know the next word...) superhighway. The technology at present is just not quite right.

There IS a light at the end of the freeway tunnel, however. Computer and communications technology is changing at such a lightening pace right now, that the first two paragraphs of this paper may well be obsolete by the time you read it. And it is these changes in technology, in the accellaration of both graphic power and file transfer speed, that poses many possibilities and questions, particulary for the advertsing industry.

Up until now, the advertising world has geared its resources towards the traditional TV/Radio/press outlets. We, the public, have always been the passive consumer, the unwilling target of commercial intrusion. But what about this new 'interactive age' that we have all been promised? This is where our role as a reluctant consumer rapidly evolves into something more.

As Rod Smith, Creative Director and Agency Principal of VOOM advertsing agency in Sydney, explains:

"Up to now we've (agencies on behalf of clients) talked at them (our relevant target markets) through ads that are read, watched and/or heard. There's always been a strong compulsory element. Even if you fast forwarded, flipped the page or drove around to see what was behind the billboard, you've had to act to avoid the ads. Advertising information has been supply driven.

Now, it's demand driven. People can increasingly start at the middle, and work their way to where they want to go."