Internet advertising surged in the first quarter

Posted by Josh on Monday, June 5th, 2006.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently announced that Internet advertising revenues surged 38% over Q1 of 2005 and 6% over the previous quarter. While the year-over-year numbers are not that surprising in light of the upward trends of participation and pricing, we were taken aback by the growth over what is widely considered to be the most expensive quarter of the year due to holiday spending.

The fact that the slow first quarter growth beat out the holiday quarter may result from various factors, the two most obvious being that the overall growth exceeds normal seasonal variation and that non-seasonal businesses provide a significant portion of overall spending.