More sober news for media execs who thought they could ride out the decline in print ads with more online ads.

Online ads are just not growing fast enough to avoid an overall revenue pinch. Or rather, online ads are not growing at the breakneck pace of last year.

Frankly, the entire concept of online ads baffles me because a properly configured browser — for me that’s Firefox with NoScript and Greasemonkey plugged in — never loads a single ad. Ever.

I gotta believe that Net savvy advertisers deep down know no-ad browsing to be increasing common and as a result, they are not about to waste ad dollars on ads that will never be seen.