Advertisers are expected to accelerate nontraditional media spend in 2012. According to MagnaGlobal, online ad spend in the U.S. is set to grow by 12.2% this year, totaling $35.6 billion, or a 20.2% market share. “Encouraged by the rise of smartphone and tablet usage and the availability of scalable platforms, mainstream advertisers are now fully embracing all mobile formats (display, search, video, in-app),” said Vincent Letang, EVP and head of global forecasting at MagnaGlobal.

According to the latest study by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet ad spending grew 22% in 2011 to $31.7 billion. The growth rate tops last year’s 14.5%, indicating that digital advertising is continuing to grow. For the fourth quarter of 2011, online ad spending hit nearly $9 billion, up 20.4% from a year ago, and 14.7% from the third quarter.

According to eMarketer, online will surpass print ad spending this year. "U.S. online advertising spending, which grew 23% to $32.03 billion in 2011, is expected to grow an additional 23.3% to $39.50 billion this year, pushing it ahead of total spending on print newspapers and magazines," said a recent eMarketer report. The eMarketer report also predicts that total ad spending in the U.S. is expected to increase further in 2012 after rising 3.4% to $158.90 billion in 2011.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, revenue from online advertising spiked to a new high in of $7.3 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Q1 numbers are up 23% over same period in 2010. However, this figure is a slight drop from the fourth quarter of 2011, which saw $7.45 billion in online ads, AdWeek has reported.

Madar Resarch reports that online advertising spend in the GCC-Levant region registered a growth twice the global rate in 2007. Travel/Hospitality and Real Estate sectors emerged as top online advertising spenders in the region during the past year with a combined outlay comprising nearly half (45%) of the total online spend.