The third annual MediaPost Forecast 2004 conference has come to a close and much like every interactive industry gathering in recent months, it left all attendees with a renewed sense of optimism for the future.

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that business & consumer services, autos, pharmaceuticals, travel/hotels/resorts and insurance & real estate led all industries in positive online ad spending growth on a year-over-year basis. For the first time the biggest spending advertisers are moving more dollars to online advertising.

Real numbers ahead, folks -- the Online Publishers Association has been busy. Today, the group released two reports, both of which focus on paid content and are sure to spark some water cooler conversations if only because the surveys are based not on self-reported consumer surveys, but on actual observed purchases of content.

We've long known that out of the hundreds of channels and thousand of websites available to consumers, they generally focus on 10-15 channels and a comparable number of websites. Now it looks like the same applies to email.

Last week, as you may remember, the American Bankers Association (ABA) 2003 Bank Marketing Planning Survey promised a 7% increase in banks' marketing budgets this year. The good news in that report was that Internet-related initiatives such as website development, online banking and bill payment were cited the top marketing initiatives banks plan to pursue during the next 12 months, according to the survey.

If Isabel does hit the East Coast in the next day or so and everyone is stuck inside waiting for fair weather, I have the perfect indoor activity. Vote for your favorite Eyeblaster (I'm going to).

While the email industry was busy discussing the questionable merits of the 3 leading anti-spam bills currently in front of Congress, California slipped one by that is very likely to be signed by Gov. Gray Davis and have a drastic - to put it mildly - effect on legitimate email marketers.

Remember that Ford ad I was talking about a few days ago, where as part of the automaker's $200 million push for the F-150 pickup, Ford took over the front pages of MSN, Yahoo and AOL?

The online ad industry keeps talking about attracting more ad dollars, but few know exactly where those dollars will be coming from. Good news: it's reasonable to assume that entertainment and automotive categories will continue to increase their spending, but now it's safe to add banking to the list.

Here are some interesting stats to wrap up the week. comScore Media Metrix today announced the top 50 U.S. Internet properties for the month of August 2003, and as expected, the data show that while the number of active Internet users increased slightly in August compared to July to 148.8 million unique users, the total amount of time spent online decreased by approximately 7% to 26.5 hours per visitor.