Hasta La Creative!

In case you missed these figures this morning, two reports were released today pegging the size of internet advertising

The Internet Advertising Bureau released their annual report this morning estimating the 2007 US internet ad spend at $21.1 billion, representing roughly a 25% increase over 2006’s figures (roughly $16.9 billion if memory serves correctly).

Meanwhile, the Kelsey Group released their annual report estimating the global internet ad spend at $45 billion (their US estimation was $22.5 billion) and forecasting $147 billion in online ad spend by 2012.

Thats a lot of cash, but I also think $147 billion is a little bit of wishful thinking. Just looking at the state of advertising on the web (and via other digital outlets such as Second Life), the internet’s signal to noise ratio would be seriously crippled if the only means to get to that result were increased ad placement.