Remember CRM? That acronym everyone was talking about at every industry gathering up until about 6 months ago? Whatever happened to Customer Relationship Management? Well, some companies have set up successful CRM programs. Some have become a statistic in a recent Gartner report.

We always knew that the web is an excellent vehicle for carrying your messages to CEOs and other high-powered big spenders, but what about those who just have a ton of money to spend but don't necessarily spend their waking hours in an office? Again, look no further than the web.

Is it me, or is "paid content" the new hot topic in the online industry? At the beginning of this week, Jupiter released a report forecasting that consumer spending on paid content will grow more than 30%, from $1.6 billion in 2002 to $2.0 billion this year and it looks like their crystal ball may be on to something if everyone doesn't follow AOL's example.

War or no war, basketball still tops the 50 most popular user searches list. According to the Terra Lycos Top 50 searches list for last week, "despite huge levels of war interest, and reduced levels of basketball interest, March Madness still came out on top with Web users by a margin of 1%."

Sunday's Oscarcast may have delivered the worst TV ratings in years, but those advertisers who included the web in their sponsorship plans shouldn't be too disappointed. Especially Diet Pepsi.

Reuters reported today that for almost two weeks now, Microsoft has been limiting the number of emails their Hotmail users can send in a 24-hour period to 100. According to the company spokeswoman Reuters quoted in the story, the 100-email limit is "well within the level" of how many emails an average person sends a day. While Reuters was very excited about this new anti-spam measure, I think this new limit will be as effective in fighting spam as a cold compress on a cancer sore.

Online advertising remains the best opportunity for most online media businesses (as everyone in this business would hope), but paid content today got a bright prognosis from the Jupiter researchers.

In the last few days, MediaPost has had to cover everything from commercial-free broadcasts of the war on cable networks to some advertisers pulling their campaigns because they don’t want to be, as Dana Blankenhorn put it, the company “this war is brought to you by.” It’s all painting a potentially dangerous picture.

Despite all our hopes for a peaceful resolution, the war has begun. Looks like the cable news networks will be covering the unfolding conflict commercial-free for the next 48 hours (at least) and all the general population can really do is wait and watch. With this war, however, consumers have more choices.

Good news for online automotive advertisers. According to the latest comScore report, 48 million Internet users - approximately 33% of all U.S. Internet users - visited the automotive category in February.