Internet advertising expenditure in the US during 1998 looks set to approach $2bn, according to quarterly reports conducted by the New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), an association of over 300 companies involved in the sales of online advertising. Though full year figures will not be published until mid-April, the third quarter report shows advertising revenues for the nine month period ending September 1998 totaled $1.3bn, with third quarter revenues at $491m, an increase of 116% over the same period last year. A spokesperson for IAB told ComputerWire that internet advertising revenues had more than doubled each year for the three years the industry had been running. Mature industries such as magazine and cable advertising had total revenues of $10bn and $7.4bn respectively for 1997. The spokesperson said that though IAB was not in the business of making predictions, it expected internet advertising to pass outdoor, billboard advertising, currently at around $4.4bn, in the next year. The spokesperson said advertisers were being attracted by the increasing numbers of people on line and the greater targeting internet advertising allows.
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