The growth is mostly attributed to a return of display advertising and, more particularly, video advertising and sponsorship. PPC advertising enjoyed an 11% increase, still representing about half of all online advertising spending. With more businesses turning to online advertising, online competition will obviously increase, which makes professional PPC management more essential than ever.

With Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas being around the corner, this means that 2010 should easily pass the 24 billion mark by the end of the year, making 2010 the biggest year ever when it comes to online advertising. So if you thought about saving a few dollars by cutting down online advertising, I would think again as your competitors will most likely advertise heavily.

The 2 advertising platforms that are currently on the rise are Facebook and LinkedIn. Since they are pretty new, they are not saturated with advertisers yet, which might give you the first mover advantage, depending on your industry and niche. In addition, since they aren’t very competitive yet, the advertising costs are so far pretty low, thus affordable to everybody.

Which one should you choose? Well, it mostly depends on your target market.

Facebook, as you may already know, is now a leading online presence, with huge traffic, but it is mostly populated with the 20 to 40 year old crowd. One of the big advantage of their platform is that you can target your audience very precisely, whether it’s in terms of demographics, personal tastes, etc …

On the other hand, LinkedIn focuses on professionals, which will allow you to reach a wealthier and more educated audience. This is, as  a result, a great marketplace for higher-end products.

As you can see, Facebook and LinkedIn cater to different markets, allowing to reach a wide spectrum of potential buyers, thus providing a cost-effective alternative to the saturated Adwords and Overture platforms.