As the ecommerce market grows, advertisers are expected to spend an annual sum of $42 billion on internet marketing by 2011, according to a new report.
And by the end of this year alone, advertisers will have paid $21.4 billion to place their ads, the latest online spending research from eMarketer has revealed.
Search ads currently represent around 40 per cent of the market, with display ads making up about 20 per cent and classified ads an additional 17 per cent. These proportions are expected to remain consistent for the next four to five years.
Overall spending is, however, slightly lower than predicted 12 months ago. The eMarketer report blames this on "the credit crunch and related economic fallout".
More than half of the companies named in Advertising Age's list of the '100 Leading National Advertisers' have reportedly reduced spending on traditional media ads and are instead pumping more funds into advertising online.