IAB And PWC: Search Doubled Previous Year’s Growth Rate In First Half Of 2011

In their regular analysis of revenues generated by the online advertising industry, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers say search unsurprisingly accounted for the most spending of any category (49%) in the first half of the year. Display was next with 37 percent of interactive spend in 1H 2011. Total spending on Search came in a $7.3 billion during the period.

“Strong online advertising growth has continued into the first half of 2011,” said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a statement. “Fueling this growth is the ability of advertisers to correlate performance and results with the dollars they are investing.”

Search and Display each grew about 27 percent year-over-year, meaning Search doubled its growth rate from the first half of 2010, when it only grew 11.6 percent. The sector as a whole grew 23 percent to $14.9 billion dollars. Search also increased its share of spending, growing from 47% in the 2010 period to 49% this year.

Pricing has continued shifting to performance-based models, as 64% of spending in the first half of the year was performance-based, as compared to 61% in the same period of 2010. Impression-based spending went down to 31%, from 35% in the same year-ago period. Hybrid models accounted for 5% of spending in 1H11, as compared to 4% in the first half of 2010.