IAB: Online Q3 Ad Revenues Reach Historic High Of $12.4 Billion

Greg Sterling on December 19, 2014

 Yesterday the IAB released an interim report saying that US online advertising reached an historic high of $12.4 billion for Q3. Ad revenues in the first half of 2013 totaled roughly $23 billion.

It’s likely that Q4 online advertising will come in around $14 billion. If so that would mean the full year 2014 would be worth roughly $50 billion. Last year online ad spending reached roughly $42.8 billion.

Most of online ad revenue (roughly 70 percent) is concentrated in the top 10 ad networks/platforms, according to the IAB. Those companies ranked 11th to 25th accounted for the next roughly 11 percent and the remaining 19 percent of online ad spend is distributed across the rest of the ecosystem.

We won’t find out what the “official” Q4 and full year revenue numbers are until Q1 of next year. It will be especially interesting to see what the mobile ad figures are. Emarketer has projected that mobile advertising will reach $19 billion in the US in 2014.