Digital Advertising Has Now Blown Past All Other Media But One...

The IAB Internet advertising report for 2012 is out.

Overall, digital advertising grew a respectable 15% in 2012, with the biggest increases coming in search, mobile, and display.

The industry totaled $37 billion for the year, in the U.S. alone.

Here are the highlights:

• Mobile grew 111% to $3.4 billion and accounted for 9% of total internet ad revenue in 2012.
• Digital video brought in $2.3 billion, up 29%
• Search was $16.9 billion, up 14.5%
• Display-related advertising revenues totaled $12 billion, up almost 9%
• Retail advertisers spent the most, accounting for 20% of total revenue in 2012. Financial services came in second, contributing 13%.

Notably, as the following chart shows, digital advertising now dwarfs newspapers and magazines and is bigger than any other media in the U.S. with the exception of broadcast TV, which hit $40 billion.

Digital is also growing faster than all other media, thus gaining share fast:

To keep things in perspective, however, "broadcast" and "cable" TV should probably be combined into a single number for "Television."

Total "Television" advertising spending was a staggering $72 billion in 2012, dwarfing every other medium.

Even if the TV industry runs aground in the next few years, it will be a long time before digital advertising surpasses it.

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