Shopping has always been something of an impulse activity, in which objects that catch our

fancy while strolling are immediately bought on a whim. Advertisers and sellers have taken advantage of this fact, carefully positioning inexpensive but attractive items on paths that we are most likely to cross, in the hopes that our human nature will lead to a greater profit for them With the dawn of the Internet and its exploding usage across the world, the same tactics apply.

Advertisers now place "banners", links to commercial web sites decorated with attractive pictures designed to catch our eyes while browsing, the webs, on key web sites with heavy traffic. They pay top dollar for the right, thus creating profits for the hosting web site as well'. These actions are performed in the hopes that during the course of our casual and leisurely web surfing, we'll click on that banner that sparks our interest and thus, in theory, buy the products advertised.

Initial results have been positive. Web sites report a huge inflow of cash, both from the advertisers who lure customers in with the banners and the hosting web sites who are paid for allowing the banners to be put in place. As trust and confidence in Internet buying increases and information security is heightened with new technology, the volume of buying is increasing, leading to even greater profits.

The current situation, however, is not quite as optimistic. Just as magazine readers tend to unconsciously ignore advertisements in their favorite periodicals, web browser are beginning to allow banners to slip their notice as well. Internet users respond to the flood of banners by viewing them as annoyances, a negative image that is hurting sales, since users are now less reluctant .to click on those banners, preferring not to support of system that put them in place. If Internet advertising is to continue to-be a viable and profitable business practice, new methods will need to be considered to reinvigorate the industry.

With the recent slump in the technology sector and slumping economy, even new practices may not do the trick. As consumers are saving more and frequenting traditional "brick and mortar" businesses over their Internet counterparts, the fate of Internet business is called into question. The coming years will be the only reliable indication of whether shopping on the world wide web is the wave of the future or simply an impulse activity whose whim has passed.

We learn from the beginning of the text that advertising on the web ______.

A．Internet advertising has displaced more traditional methods of advertising

B．banners and other advertising schemes are the ways to make profit on the

C．is paralleling advertising methods in traditional business settings

D．seeks to lure customers primarily through impulse shopping methods