The online advertising industry saw growth accelerate in Q1, with the combined ad revenues of the four largest players Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL jumping almost 15% to $8.8 billion. This compares to 10% annual growth in the Q4, and negative growth the first two quarters of last year. Overall growth would have been even stronger if AOL didn’t have such a rough quarter. It was the only one of the four companies to show a decline in ad revenues, down 19%, reported Tech Crunch.
Google’s ad revenue was up 21.5%, Microsoft’s was up 8.8%, and Yahoo’s was up 3% (although the display portion was up 20%). As a result of AOL’s poor showing, the combined $8.8 billion total was down 2.6% from Q4’s $9 billion, said the article.
The numbers represent global ad revenues, and include network revenues paid to affiliates through AdSense and Yahoo’s ad network. Google’s licensing revenues for Google Enterprise Apps have been stripped out. For Microsoft and AOL, Tech Crunch includes only the ad portions of their online revenues as reported in their quarterly earnings statements.
Online Ad Revenues (in millions)
| Q1’09 | Q2’09 | Q3’09 | Q4’09 | Q1’10 | |
| $5,331 | $5,336 | $5,757 | $6,465 | $6,475 | |
| Yahoo | $1,383 | $1,378 | $1,377 | $1,535 | $1,423 |
| Microsoft | $520 | $540 | $490 | $581 | $566 |
| AOL | $443 | $419 | $415 | $472 | $324 |
| Total | $7,677 | $7,673 | $8,039 | $9,053 | $8,818 |
| Sequential Growth Q/Q | -6.55% | -0.05% | 4.77% | 12.60% | -2.60 |
| Annual Growth Y/Y | -4.63% | -5.76% | 1.22% | 10.20% | 14.86% |
