In the 1998 election, New York gubernatorial candidate Peter Vallone, D, went where virtually no one had gone before. His campaign paid $50,000 to conduct negative advertising against incumbent Gov. George Pataki, not on television, but on The New York Times' Web site.

     Vallone ultimately lost, but his advertising had a direct effect on increasing Pataki's negative ratings, particularly among swing independent votes, according to an "E-Voter 98" study, and that is likely to be enough evidence for many candidates to jump into the unknown waters of online political advertising.

     "In this election cycle, we will see significant advertising online and any candidate that doesn't think about doing it is making a huge mistake," said Phil Noble, president of PoliticsOnline, a consulting service and Web site.

     At least two large consumer Web sites have decided to get an early jump on the coming trend. America Online and MSNBC.com have both said they are now taking political advertisements in the form of "banner ads" which run in strips along the top, bottom or sides of web pages visited by consumers.

     While neither company will say which candidates have purchased advertising on their sites, both companies offer candidates a whole new method of getting their word out to a very targeted audience. Under America Online's "My Government," the network's 17 million subscribers can punch in their zip code and view candidate ads for local and state races. On MSNBC's site, the network's 10 million monthly users may look in the opinion or news sections and find an ad for a national candidate.

     "The Internet is a very valid vehicle for reaching specific audiences," said Peggy White, director of sales and marketing at MSBC.com.

     It also is a less expensive medium than traditional television spots, which eat up one-third to one-half of a typical campaign's advertising budget. Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, for example, reportedly spent $600 on his Web site, which analysts say had a big impact on pushing swing voters his way. Successful candidates for U.S. Senator, by contrast, have to raise around $5 million to $7 million to run their campaigns, with the lion's share going to pay for media ads.

     Costs of advertising over the Net are difficult to gauge in these early stages, but sites typically charge a flat fee in exchange for the ad remaining on a site until it has garnered a certain number of mouse clicks - how ad "impressions" are technically measured online. While AOL and MSNBC declined to disclose what they charge, outside consultants say the typical fee for a banner ad on a any major Web site is about $40 to $60 per 1,000 impressions, with most advertisers buying impressions in the hundreds of thousands.

     By comparison, a 30-second advertisement during a national television program, like NBC's "ER," can cost as much as $475,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.

     "Banner campaign ads are a terrific alternative to television," said Michael Cornfield, professor at George Washington's School of Political Management.

     Viewers who go to campaign Web pages also spend an average 8 minutes clicking on various aspects of the site. Comparatively, the typical 30-second TV spot does not guarantee any viewers.

     "We see across all of our political sites that the average time a person spends ranges between 7 and 10 minutes, and that is an eternity compared to a 30-second TV spot or an 8-second sound bite," said Jonah Seiger, principal at mindshare Internet Campaigns, a political internet consulting company in Washington. "And if a candidate can't inform a viewer in 8 minutes about why they want to be president, then they have bigger problems than their banner placements."

     A further advantage to using the Internet is potential to actually target specific voters and more cheaply than through direct mail. One option that AOL considered, but has dropped for now, is linking subscribers to voter databases. Direct mailers can use voter databases, which list whether a person is registered as a Democrat or Republican, to send them campaign advertisements. Being able to find voters online would be a powerful and inexpensive new tool for candidates.

     "It's only a question of time before campaigns can link to all kinds of databases. If AOL doesn't do it, someone else will," Noble said.

     Still, most campaigns are hanging back from Internet advertising. Republican Steve Forbes is the only one of the growing list of potential presidential candidates to commit to placing political ads online, according to National Journal's Hotline. Other presidential candidates, like Republican Lamar Alexander, Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-NJ, are said to be considering online political advertising, but it is too early in the campaign to have made a decision on media strategy.

     The Republican National Committee, which gets about 60,000 hits per day on its main Web site, is looking into using online advertising to increase its volunteer list and increase traffic to its main site, but it hasn't decided as of yet whether to actually buy banner ads.

     "It's apparent that the Internet will move in this election cycle from billboard to an interactive medium and we certainly plan to take advantage of that... but we'll probably and wait and see whether online advertising" takes off, said Howard Opinski, McCain's campaign press secretary.

     Despite the potential of the Internet, the concern, as expressed by Opinski and others, is whether online advertising really works. One political consultant, who declined to be named, said even with the "E-Vote 98" study there is no real hard research data, or track record, to prove that people that go on the web are actually affected by banner ads, or that the people that are targeted actually read the ads.

     In addition, it is also not clear what works best in online advertising --whether it can actually recruit volunteers, or raise money or actually persuade voters to choose one candidate over another.

     Seiger is convinced the medium works. Last year, his company worked with Americans for Computer Privacy, a coalition formed to lobby for lifting encryption restrictions, to help them expand member support. ACP bought 6.5 million ad impressions on roughly 200 Web sites and doubled the group's membership and Web site traffic within one month.

     "For us, it's a powerful tool in our arsenal, but that isn't necessarily the right option for every issue," Seiger said. "There are other ways to use the Net to define the context of an issue and you don't necessarily have to pay to get your message across."