These are great times for online marketers. Internet ad spending grew by a third from 2005 to 2006, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers (IAB/PwC).

Online ad spending revenues totaled $16.8 billion in 2006, up from $12.5 billion in 2005.

"It's been a long time since any medium had three years in a row of 30%-plus ad spending increases," notes eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman. "With a 34% gain in 2006…the Internet now matches cable TV from 1983 to 1985 and broadcast TV from 1952 to 1954 for such strong, long-term spending increases. Such comparisons to TV advertising are apropos, since online video grabbed everyone's attention in the past year."

Of particular note: Online revenues in Canada grew 80 percent in 2006! This is likely due to the substantially greater broadband penetration in Canada, at 58 percent of households versus 46 percent in the United States.

Our own United Church of God online advertising budget has grown 44 percent, 81 percent and 33 percent for 2005, 2006 and 2007. We're actually above the U.S. average growth rate in this regard.

See the chart on page 2 with our online advertising impressions at Google and Yahoo for January through May for the past three years.

These are some very significant increases, with this past March showing 10.4 million views of our ads at Google and Yahoo!