I don’t know about you, but each day for me starts with deleting email. It takes at least half and hour to delete junk, block senders, unsubscribe to things I never subscribed to, etc. Only after that, do I get to sort through the press releases and announcements that come to MediaPost, answer reader email, the usual work-related stuff.

You may be looking forward to it. You may be dreading it. Regardless, the world looks pink in preparation for V-day on Friday and the Web is especially festive.

I don’t mean to perpetuate the inane debate of whether the Web is a branding or a direct response medium, but last week WebSideStory reported that the majority of Internet sites worldwide are reached through direct navigation rather than through search engines and Web links. Here’s the interesting part: WebSideStory attributes the rise in direct navigation online to online branding.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau released the results of their latest Cross Media Optimization Study today, which found that 1) using a static budget, optimal results are achieved when online advertising is 10-15% of the marketing mix; 2) adding online advertising expands reach and coverage and 3) increasing online allocation produces better overall results by increasing the ROI.

In January, Europe’s Interactive Publishing decided it would be fun to get 20 of the top European online publishing executives together for two days in Zurich to talk about the "immediate present and future of the online publishing industry." The results of the roundtable were far from eye-opening, but shed an interesting light on our European counterparts.

The concept of daypart targeting online has been a hot debate topic ever since the Online Publishers Association discovered that “daytime is primetime on the web,” but until today, no one really knew what those dayparts were. The OPA has decided to come to the rescue and has partnered with Nielsen//NetRatings to figure out where the natural breaks in the dayparts occur and what it all means.

I will never understand why some companies feel the need to research things that everyone already knows.

I think I may have found one answer to the question every man will be asking in 10 days: What do women want? Turns out it’s online communities. While I personally wouldn’t advise making use of this information for Valentine’s Day, I do think marketers should pay attention.

Converting traditional advertisers into online aficionados is a frustrating process, but there is progress to report. The latest AdRelevance research from Nielsen//NetRatings reveals that a total of 286 Fortune 500 advertisers launched an online advertising campaign during the last quarter of 2002, as compared to 270 the year prior.