US online advertising revenue rose 15 percent last year to a record $26 billion, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said Wednesday.

US online advertising revenue increased 19 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to $7.45 billion, also a record, the IAB and PwC said.

Search advertising accounted for $12 billion, or 46 percent of total online ad revenue last year, while display-related advertising totaled $9.9 billion, or 38 percent of total online ad revenue, they said.

Display advertising includes rich media, digital video and banner ads.

The IAB and PwC for the first time also provided an estimate for US mobile advertising revenue. They estimated US mobile advertising revenue for 2010 was between $550 million and $650 million.

"With a strong rebound from 2009, the $26 billion spent on Internet advertising points to a continued focus on digital media ad spend, with dollars catching up to the eyeballs," said PwC partner David Silverman.

US online advertising revenue fell three percent in 2009 compared with the previous year, the first year of decline since 2002.

"Consumers have shifted more of their time to digital media -- watching television shows and movies online -- and advertisers now accept this multifaceted medium as a key component for reaching their targets," IAB president and chief executive Randall Rothenberg said.

earlier related report
Google and Bing gain as Yahoo! slips in search
San Francisco (AFP) April 13, 2011 - Google and Bing gained ground in the US Internet search market in March at the expense of Ask, AOL, and Yahoo!, according to figures released Wednesday by industry tracker comScore.

Google continued to be the prime tool used to seek online information, handling 65.7 percent of "explicit" queries as compared to 65.4 percent the previous month, comScore reported.

Yahoo! websites remained the second most popular place for Internet searches, but its portion of queries slid 0.4 percent in the month to 15.7 percent, according to comScore.

The number of online searches done using Microsoft's Bing service rose 0.3 percent to 13.9 when compared to February.

Since Bing powers Internet search at Yahoo! websites, the engine actually accounted for 29.6 percent of US queries in what was seen as positive momentum for Microsoft in the market.

Ask and AOL saw their search shares drop a tenth of a percent each to 3.1 and 1.6 respectively, according to comScore.

More than 16.9 billion "explicit core searches" were conducted in March, with Google tending to 11.1 of them, comScore reported.

Explicit searches were described as people seeking online information they clearly intended to interact with.