Ad Revenue, 1st Half: FTW!

The boys off Madison Ave. aren’t the only people in America that can make bank. Ad revenue for the first half of this year is at almost $15 billion. That’s great news for Advertising companies as they are now approaching the holidays where online and mobile sales should guarantee a lot of impressions. In fact, it seems people are more inclined this year than ever to use mobile devices to influence buying decisions. You can read Steve Smith’s article all about it here. Despite the economic situation in the US, it’s a positive thing to hear that ad revenues are doing so well. It exemplifies that interactive media is leading to a richer user experience and can be a valuable asset regardless of the economy.

The nuts and bolts, straight from the horse’s mouth (in this case, IAB’s website): “Internet ad revenues rose 23.2 percent—to a record $14.9 billion—in the first half of 2011, according to figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC US). The rate of growth more than doubled year-over-year, as last year’s first-half ad revenues of $12.1 billion had represented an 11.3 percent increase over 2009.” That’s pretty awesome if you ask me.

What’s even cooler than a polar bear’s toenails? Search. Just as you’re on this awesome search site, know that search accounted for almost 49% of that $15 billion. IAB reports, “Display accounted for 37 percent of all interactive spend in the first half of 2011, with search remaining the leading online category at 49 percent of the total—nearly $7.3 billion. Search and Display each grew about 27 percent year-over-year, with Search more than doubling its previous year’s growth rate of 11.6 percent.”

You can check out all the charts on IAB’s above-referenced site, but rather than bog ya down with a bunch of figures, it’s more interesting to talk about the impact this news has and what it means for online advertising as a whole. You’ve seen the trend over the last twenty years with the internet becoming more and more readily available. With new and improved mobile devices, and Wifi becoming as ubiquitous as water fountains, it goes without saying that this was inevitable. What’s really interesting is that its occured during such economic circumstances. That tells you a lot about how folks get their information.

“The remarkably resilient performance of interactive advertising so far in 2011 demonstrates that more marketers are placing big bets on digital to tell their brand stories,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO, IAB. “This welcome news, in light of the weakness in a large part of the rest of the U.S. economy, confirms that the innovations happening in interactive marketing deliver great value to the industry and to the consumer.”

“Strong online advertising growth has continued into the first half of 2011,” said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. “Fueling this growth is the ability of advertisers to correlate performance and results with the dollars they are investing.”

“These figures build upon the positive news we saw in the 2010 year-end revenue report,” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president, Industry Services, IAB. “It’s a clear signal that all of us in the interactive advertising industry are delivering meaningful results to marketers—and that they are confident in investing in interactive.”

I still enjoy sitting in a coffee shop and reading a good old-fashioned newspaper (yep, newprint is now old school *sad face), but I’m happy to place my faith in interactive media. With our latest generation weened on iDevices, laptops, and the like, its a safe bet to say that this trend should continue. And just like a cream filled cupcake… How sweet it is.

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