The hard work of busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers and oth­ers who tire­less­ly put their backs into dri­ving online adver­tis­ing sales has paid off hand­some­ly in the US, where ad sales hit an his­toric high of $20.1 bil­lion dol­lars dur­ing the first half of 2013.

Mobile gets gold, dig­i­tal video silver

The fig­ures, which are con­tained in the lat­est Inter­net Adver­tis­ing Rev­enue report from the Inter­ac­tive Adver­tis­ing Bureau (IAB), rep­re­sent an annu­al increase of 18 per cent. The report was pre­pared for the IAB by PwC US and reflects a con­tin­u­ing healthy recov­ery in online adver­tis­ing stateside.

Busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers will doubt­less be curi­ous to fig­ure out which aspects of the mar­ket put in the best per­for­mances. Accord­ing to the report, the prize for most spec­tac­u­lar rev­enue growth has to go to mobile ads, which saw a spec­tac­u­lar 145 per cent increase this year to hit a rev­enue total of $3 bil­lion. But dig­i­tal video is no shrink­ing vio­let in Adland: rev­enues rose sharply to hit $1.1 bil­lion, a rise of 24 percent.

The IAB’s Pres­i­dent and CEO, Ran­dall Rothen­berg, said:

“Dig­i­tal has steadi­ly increased its abil­i­ty to cap­ti­vate con­sumers and then cap­ture the mar­ket­ing dol­lars that fol­low. Mobile advertising’s break­neck growth is evi­dence that mar­keters are rec­og­niz­ing the tremen­dous pow­er of small­er screens. Dig­i­tal video is also on a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry, deliv­er­ing avid view­er­ship and strong brand-build­ing opportunities.”

If mobile and dig­i­tal video get the gold and sil­ver medals for rev­enue, bronze goes to search, which saw rev­enues total­ing $8.7 bil­lion in the first half of 2013 – a 7 per­cent increase on the $8.1 bil­lion gen­er­at­ed dur­ing the same peri­od last year.

The rise of interactive

PwC US part­ner, David Sil­ver­man, said that the report con­firmed not only that brands are com­mit­ting more strong­ly to inter­ac­tive but also under­scored the fact that mobile and dig­i­tal video are now seen as “inte­gral ele­ments” of mar­ket­ing strate­gies. “Inter­net advertising’s abil­i­ty to impact and engage is evi­dent across dig­i­tal screens, whether big or small,” he added.

Sea­soned busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers will almost cer­tain­ly con­cur with the obser­va­tions of the IAB’s SVP of Research, Ana­lyt­ics and Mea­sure­ment, Sher­rill Mane, who said that mar­keters are fol­low­ing the lead shown by con­sumers, who are embrac­ing “new screens, new con­tent and trans­form­ing how they shop, com­mu­ni­cate and con­sume con­tent at an accel­er­at­ed clip.”