British ventures into net radio have been marked with successes by stations like Virgin and Jazz FM, but other net only projects such as StormLive have been unable to compete. StormLive was launched by ex-Radio 1 DJ Bruno Brookes, with the slogan "The Future Has No Frequency," but effectively shut down when it sacked its DJ's and became completely automated in July 2001. David Richardson is Programme Director of the companies' Stormdb venture : "As far as the Internet side went it was an experiment to a certain degree, the dot com bust meant it ceased to be a profitable area. I'd say we were in at the forefront of what should be an area for the future, but to make a go of it we need cheap, available broadband."

A key factor in many business models is getting advertisers to spend on net radio. Gavin Starks, Chairman of the Internet Webcasters Association (Europe) reckons : "You've got to educate the advertisers themselves. Say: 'We have an audience, this is the demographic, the cost and this is what your return is.' Things like Measurecast really help because we can do a like for like comparison of the number of people listening online, measure the duration they've been listening for and the audience reach - something traditional RAJAR stats don't let you do."

In fact the information available to advertisers is more detailed than you might imagine. Denise Reiling of Adsertion, who match advertisers with net radio audiences, says: "When a listener comes on we know a few things about them - we know their gender, zip code, country, age, email address - so we know what ads they have been served and we can fine tune and send them specific types of advertisements."

The advertiser can then receive very detailed feedback: "One of the big advantages is in the ability to report back to the advertiser on how many people actually saw or listened to the ad. In standard radio you are just guessing," says Denise.

This profiling is key, according to Streaming specialist Craig Moehl of Groovy Gecko: "This means it is going to make the cost of net radio a lot more affordable - they can charge the advertisers a premium for the CPM (cost per thousand), because the thousand people listening are going to be the thousand people that the advertiser really wants to get hold of.".

In the UK RAJAR monitor radio audiences and have been including Internet listening in their figures since 2000 - Jane O'Hara is not so convinced the market is ready: "We did a couple of pilot studies last year - if people said they had listened to radio via the Internet we asked them to fill in the names of the stations from the previous seven days. What we found was because listening was spread amongst so many different stations, that no station gets particularly high audiences at the moment.. The data ultimately wasn't usable."

Paul Maloney, Editor of Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) thinks the answer lies in combining efforts: "I think it will be more than just ratings of individual stations, it will be about networks of stations. If I buy onto this 'network' then I am going to get 100 different stations and millions of impressions for my ads."

The unique profile of net radio listeners is something that could be taken advantage of, says Mike O'Brien of the Radio Advertising Bureau: "At the moment net radio listening habits are slightly different to normal analogue listening habits in that a lot of people listen at work. In that sense it's an area where they stand out - that is an opportunity for the advertiser." He added: "Reach and listening hours are both growing rapidly, and with some advertisers already using Internet Radio we can expect growth."

However, Stormdb's David Richardson continues to sound a note of caution: "I think the Internet as a whole has had a problem with advertising to an extent - perhaps it has had a problem being taken seriously - and it's up against some very stiff competition where advertisers are more used to spending their money."