Online Advertising Hits $31.7 Billion in 2011

A report on Internet Advertising Revenue for the full year of 2011 by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) which was prepared by Price Waterhouse Cooper US indicates that revenues have soared to a new high of a staggering $31 billion. This figure is a 22% increase from the previous year which was another record-breaker at $26 billion. The report which was released today showed that the fourth quarter of 2011 hit the best-ever quarterly revenue of $9 billion thus totting up an increase from the third quarter which hit $7.8 billion on top of which it had increased by 20% from the Q4 numbers of 2010 which was at $7.4 billion.

Other highlights of the report from IAB included that mobile based advertising experienced the faster growth among all the categories with a triple digit growth from year to year. It was up by 149% to 1.6 billion for 2011 from $0.6 billion in 2010. Secondly, digital video, a component of display-related advertising saw a significant increase of 29% annually which brought in $1.8 billion in revenue as opposed to $1.4 billion in 2010.

Also worth mentioning is that search-based revenue in 2011 totaled $14.8 billion which has increased significantly by 27% from 2010 where it was amounted at $11.7 billion. Display-related advertising revenues in 2011 totaled $11.1 billion which is a whopping 35% of all the revenue from 2011 up from 15% which is $9.6 billion in 2010. And lastly, retail advertisers continue to represent the largest category of internet advertising expenditure accounting for 22% in 2011 with $7.1 billion up from 21% in 2010 with $5.5 billion.

The survey which was carried out includes data concerning online advertising revenues from websites, commercial online services, free email providers and all other companies that sell online advertising. The report from which all the data originates is released twice yearly with half and full year data along with quarterly estimates for the first and third quarters of each year. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion about it whether reassurance or otherwise.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Web