NEW YORK (AFP) - Internet advertising revenues in the United States surged 42.7 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period a year ago to 2.37 billion dollars, an industry group said.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said that pushed Internet advertising revenues for the first six months of 2004 to 4.6 billion dollars, a 39.7 percent increase over the first half of 2003.
The increase in revenues for the April-June period was six percent from the prior quarter.
"Internet advertising is without question taking share from the other media at this time and for good reason -- marketers have figured out that online advertising is often the most cost effective medium for influencing both branding and sales results," said Greg Stuart, president and chief executive of the IAB.
"The industry has been experimenting with different formats since the beginning, and while search has been the strongest format recently, we think that evolution process will continue." said Tom Hyland of the PricewaterhouseCoopers New Media Group, which conducts the survey for IAB.
"In fact, as broadband begins to reach critical mass in the home we think the number of traditional advertisers with branding objectives will further increase as it provides a better platform for more compelling media ads and video formats."
The biggest area of online advertising is the "search" category, or ads linked to the user's search query, representing 947 million dollars, or 40 percent of total spending. Display ads were about half that amount, or 474 million dollars.