• Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12 PM

It's no surprise, but now it's official--marketers continue to spend more and more of their advertising dollars online. A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed that online advertising increased 38 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, rising to $3.9 billion from $2.8 billion. To put the amount in perspective, first quarter online spending represented 80 percent of the dollars spent online during all of 1999--the bubble years of the Internet era. "Consumer habits are continuing to change and mature," says David Silverman of PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Companies are effectively learning to devote more of their advertising budget to this fast-growing advertising platform in order to reach the right audience at the right time." If the rest of 2006 continues at this pace, it would be the fourth straight year of annual growth for online advertising, which has been increasing since 2002, when $6 billion was spent on Internet marketing. Advertisers spent $7.2 billion in 2003, $9.6 billion in 2004, and $12.5 billion in 2005.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »