United States: Online Advertising Breaks New Record

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has announced the amount of money invested by American advertisers during the first quarter of 2012: $8.4 billion. This figure is up 15 percent from last year — that is, an additional $1.1 billion has been injected into the market in three months — and this sum sets a new record in the American interactive advertising market. Never has a sum of money this large been placed in digital media during a single three month period.

For Randall Rothenberg, chairman of the IAB, it’s proof that advertisers are moving their expenditures to where the consumers are. “More online consumers than ever are taking to the Internet to inform and navigate their daily lives — by desktop, tablet or smartphone — and marketers and agencies are clearly, and wisely, investing dollars to reach digitally connected consumers,” he stated in a press release.

In the first quarter of 2011, the American market had set its previous record. At $7.3 billion, the amount of investments had climbed 23 percent from 2010, managing to make up for the relapse during the 2009 crisis. During the whole the year, this sum had reached $31.7 billion, a 22 percent increase from the previous year. In six years, the market has more than doubled — advertising expenses had reached $3.8 billion in the first semester of 2006.