US Internet advertising revenue reached $7.3 billion in the first quarter of 2011, an all-time high and a 23% increase compared with Q1 2010, according to industry group the Interactive Advertising Bureau and advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“This is online ad revenue returning to the trend and the trajectory that it was on before the recession,” said Joe Laszlo, deputy director of the Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence at the IAB. “So in part, this is spending going back to where it was before….Some marketers, who were skeptical or holding back, are seeing the returns and the value of spending more on their budgets, including interactive advertising.”
Many marketers are also more comfortable with digital marketing than they were in past years, he said, adding that brands in the consumer packaged goods category are spending more on digital than they did previously.
“It comes down to marketers and agencies understanding the medium better,” he said. “It took TV a long time to reach the levels of ad spending that it reaches.
Laszlo declined to make any ad revenue predictions for the remainder of 2011, but he noted that ad revenue growth is generally higher in the second half of the year than the first.
