Ad Spending Hits $18.2 Billion Globally in the First Quarter

Online advertising continues to grow, after starting to pick up again last year. The first quarter proved quite lucrative, at least in the US, as online ad sales hit $7.3 billion, the biggest quarter on record. Google also managed to overtake Yahoo to become the largest display ad provider in the US in the first quarter.

"Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $7.3 billion for the first quarter of 2011, representing a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2010," the Internet Advertising Bureau, which provided the data, said.

"This marks the highest first-quarter revenue level ever for the industry and a significant increase over last year’s first-quarter revenue level, which had been the highest on record to date," it added.

This bodes well for the online economy, since ad spending slowed down and actually decreased a couple of years ago during the global economic crisis. But things are getting back on track and online ad spending is expected to continue to grow at a huge pace.

According to another report, Google is finally starting to see some pay-off on its long struggle to drive up display ad sales. Most of Google's ad money comes from search and text ads.

However, in the first quarter in the US, Google managed to grab 14.7 percent of the total revenue from display ads, up from 13.3 percent in the last quarter. In that time, Yahoo's share went from 13.6 percent to just 12.3 percent.

Which is just as well since display ads as a whole are taking away market share from search ads, 33.3 percent of money spent went to display ads in the first quarter, compared to 29 percent two years ago. Global ad sales are on the rise as well, though by 14.3 percent year over year in Q1, going from $15.9 billion in Q1 2010 to $18.2 billion in Q1 2011.