It’s offi­cial: all the hard work put in by art direc­tors, copy­writ­ers and account man­agers at their online adver­tis­ing agen­cies has paid off. US dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing rev­enue soared by 15.5% in 2012, leap­ing from 2011’s total of $31.7 bil­lion to $36.6 billion.

Trump­ing 2011

The figures are contained in the annual report of the Interactive Agency Bureau (IAB) and, frankly, they make happy reading for the jobbing art director and account manager. Mobile revenue topped the growth league table with triple-digit expansion for the second year running, rocketing by 112.5% between 2011 and 2012 from $1.6 billion to $3.4 billion. In the space of a single year, mobile ads have almost doubled, bouncing from 5% of total US digital advertising in 2011 to 9.3% in 2012.

Art direc­tors and account man­agers in the inter­net adver­tis­ing cat­e­go­ry also have good rea­son to be slap­ping each oth­er on the back, as it has now become the sec­ond largest adver­tis­ing cat­e­go­ry behind broad­cast TV – it over­took cable TV ad spend­ing in 2011. David Sil­ver­man, a part­ner at Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers LLP, which helped put the report togeth­er, said: “When we look at it on a longer-term tra­jec­to­ry, the growth in over­all adver­tis­ing is real­ly being fueled by over­all inter­net spending.”

The rise of dig­i­tal video

Rev­enue from dig­i­tal video adver­tis­ing was in rude health, too, surg­ing by 27.8% on 2012 to hit $2.3 bil­lion – up from £1.8 bil­lion in 2011. The CEO and pres­i­dent of inter­net research and advi­so­ry firm Gri­d­ley & Com­pa­ny LLC, Lin­da Gri­d­ley, attrib­uted the rise to the bur­geon­ing uptake of smart­phones and tablets, as well as to improve­ments in the qual­i­ty and vari­ety of dig­i­tal videos. She also point­ed to recent data reveal­ing that 39% of adver­tis­ers’ bud­gets for dig­i­tal video had been divert­ed from TV ad bud­gets in the first quar­ter of 2013.

Oth­er trends in 2012 revealed in the IAB report include a robust increase in search ad rev­enue, which showed an annu­al jump of 14.2%, ris­ing from $14.8 bil­lion in 2011 to $16.9 bil­lion last year. Mean­while, dis­play ad rev­enue rose by 9.1% from $11 bil­lion to $12 bil­lion in 2012, rep­re­sent­ing 32.8% of over­all ad revenue.