Search Ads now $2.6 billion for first 6 months 2005 (IAB Reports)

[Nacho]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5882670.html

As of June, advertisers had spent $5.8 billion to place ads online this year, a 26 percent increase compared with the first six months of 2004, according to a new report.

This record spending was once again led by ads linked to Web search results, said the Interactive Advertising Bureau, or IAB, which released the report Monday in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Spending on search-related ads reached $2.3 billion, a 27 percent increase compared with the same period last year, the report said.

You're welcome to discuss the growth of our industry and the latest numbers here.

[andrewgoodman]

The numbers do seem to be a bit hard to gauge. Analysts put Google's revenues at $3.9 billion for 2005 (estimated), and Yahoo's just a bit below that. Google gets 98% of revenue from ads, and Yahoo... ? 60-70% with about half that from search. And that's only the top two companies. Everyone else probably accounts for nearly as much again.

Somebody is either doing some very careful digging to separate out content revenue from search ad revenue, or the numbers are on the low side, IMHO.