According to www.internetworldstats.com, as of May 2008 there were 219.5 million Internet users in the U.S.—72.3 percent of the U.S. population. This is compared with 124 million users in 2000, or 44.1 percent of the population.

Additionally, Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit a record high of $21.2 billion in 2007, which was up 26 percent from 2006.

With the Internet growth and the prevalence of the Internet in U.S. homes, advertisers recognize their chance to use interactive media, which can be viewed often and by many people.

Following are some statistics from Overdrive Interactive regarding the growth of online advertising:

• A May 2008 study showed that to reach specific, targeted customer segments, 75 percent of advertisers use online advertising.
• With the decline of traditional advertising media, interactive media is expected to be the major source of growth in advertising spending. In fact, interactive media's share of advertising spending is expected to be 15 percent in 2009 compared with 6 percent four years ago.
• In 2007, almost 45 percent of interactive advertising spending was display, which is expected to decrease slightly in favor of paid search advertising, which accounted for 38 percent of expenditures.
• In 2007, Google had an 86 percent share of search inquiries among 35 countries and has more than a 61 percent share of mobile searches. Google also is used more often; Google users search nine times per month on average compared with 6.7 times for Yahoo mobile searchers.
• The auto industry has been using Internet advertising more frequently. Internet advertising spending increased 57 percent from 2005 to 2006 and another 40 percent from 2006 to 2007. Meanwhile, newspaper advertising spending was cut in half between 2005 and 2007.
• The consumer industry dominates the Internet advertising market with 55 percent of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2007, followed by financial services at 15 percent, computing at 11 percent, telecommunications at 8 percent and media at 6 percent.

This Web exclusive information is a supplement to Workplace.