Online Advertising Industry Growing Again
By Anna Johnson on April 14th, 2010The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have released figures indicating that spending on online advertising is growing again.
In the fourth quarter of 2009 online advertising revenues in the U.S. rose 2.6 percent compared with the previous year to reach $6.3 billion. Revenues were also 13.8 percent more than ad revenues in the third quarter.
Whilst online ad revenues were down 3.4 percent to $22.7 billion for 2009 as a whole (the first year since 2001 in which online ad spending has dropped), the fourth quarter results continue an upward trend – spending in the third quarter grew by 1.7 percent over the Q2 2009 online ad spend.
Search engine marketing, followed by display advertising, attracted the bulk of Internet marketers’ ad dollars. In 2009 the percentage spent on each major online marketing category was as follows:
- Search engine marketing: $10.7 billion (47 percent of $22.7 billion)
- Display advertising: $8 billion (31 percent)
- Online classifieds: $2.3 billion (10 percent)
- Lead generation: $1.5 billion (6 percent)
- Online video advertising: $1 billion (4 percent)
- Email marketing: $292 million (1 percent)
(Percentages don’t add up to 100 percent due to rounding)
