If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As reported by AdAge, online advertising revenue reached $21.1 billion in 2007. This marks a 26% increase over 2006, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s and PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ annual report of ad spending.

This big jump in revenue pushed web ad spending past radio and, more surprisingly, cable. Cable ad revenue was “only” $20.9 billion. The often cited migration of advertising dollars to the Internet will continue in the future, possibly at an increased rate.

The Internet Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers observed that it was mostly the big players who were responsible for the growth of online ad spending. The Internet’s top 10 properties owned by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IAC, News Corp. and other large corporations accounted for 69% of all online ad spending. Search advertising remains the biggest source of income in online advertising; it accounted for about 40% of total ad spending.

These numbers can no longer be ignored by the big traditional media businesses, and so they find themselves in the situation where they must invest in the online sector if they want to avert the loss of advertising clients to web sites and online networks. As reported yesterday, CBS Corp. is going to acquire CNet Networks Inc. for $1.8 billion. Most analysts consider this a wise decision - despite the hefty 45 percent premium CBS is paying for the Internet company - because of CNet’s wide reach on the Internet, its established brand names and high-value domain names.