Online advertising to boom this year

Thought you were already seeing a lot of online ads? Well, brace yourself: there’s going to be even more of it about.

The latest forecast from analysis firm eMarketer predicts that online advertising spending in the US will grow 20.2 percent this year to $31.3 billion, up from $26 billion in 2010.

And with advertising space dropping in cost, more spending means a lot more ads.

“The internet has become as fundamental as television to advertisers,” says eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman.

“As consumers continue to increase their time spent online and as the resurgent economy continues to bolster ad budgets, we’re going to continue to see an influx of dollars toward the internet. More ad formats, such as video, and more channels, especially social media and mobile, are also key contributors to the spending gains.”

Indeed, eMarketer believes that internet ads will account for nearly a fifth of all major media ad dollars spent in the US this year, up from a 17 percent share in 2010.

Most of the increase is expected to come from display ads. While this still lags well behind search advertising, it’ll still amount to a £12.33 billion market. Indeed, eMarketer predicts it’ll overtake search ads as soon as 2015.

Search advertising should do well all the same, says eMarketer accounting for 45.9 percent of overall US ad dollars this year.

“Marketers increasingly see the internet as a place where brand advertising, especially in the form of video advertising, is effective,” says Hallerman.

“Combined with greater targeting and measurement than marketers get with TV ads, the growing consumption of online video has done more to attract brands than any other online ad format.”