Adwords: interacting with consumers

Canadian courts have so far demonstrated a relatively permissive approach to keyword advertising. Victoria Carrington explains.

Online advertising is a massive business that generates billions of dollars of revenue— and it is growing. According to the annual Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet advertising revenue in the US alone totalled $7.2 billion in 2001.

Consumer brand advertisers represented the largest category of advertiser spending in that year—about 31 percent in the fourth quarter— and by far the biggest sub-category was online retail advertising (49 percent), followed by music (16 percent) and automotive (12 percent).

Fast forward to 2011. In the fi rst half of the year in the US, online advertising revenues have increased to $14.9 billion, a likely fourfold increase over 2001 by the end of the year, refl ecting a steady and signifi cant upward trend that has continued uninterrupted since the birth of Internet advertising and despite the various economic downturns of the last decade. Consumer retail advertising still makes up the largest category of Internet ad spending.