By Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

Multiple sources report that the economy is in an upswing. Major advertisers report a 6% increase in spending, but more significantly, about 40% of Americans indicate that the economy is improving!

Our friends at HubSpot have compiled an anthology of reports about advertising in various mediums and we want to share the positive news with our readers. Here is Part One of our summary:

Marketing Media B2B vs B2C Courtesy of Hubspot

Media and Advertising :

• The top 10 advertisers increased 5.9% to $11.91 billion in the first 9 months of 2010 with revenues approaching $173 billion  in 2011 (source Kantar Media)
• Strong growth in TV media with a growth rate of 10.3%, with impressive growth in Spanish language media (source Kantar Media)
• Ad spending for radio is up 7.6% with Network radio reaching 189.7 million listeners (source Arbitron RADAR 107)
• Newspapers as expected was negative and slow, along with magazines, directories and direct mail will continue the downward trend. However, national Sunday magazine supplements grew 20.5% (source Kantar Media)
• Online news audience up 17%. In fact, more people got their news from the Internet than newspapers, but trails TV (source Pew Research)
• Online ad revenue will overtake newspaper ad revenue for the first time ever (source Pew Research)
• Paid online news is going to be a reality with 23% of Americans saying they would pay $5 a month for an online version of their newspaper if they failed to exist. (source Experian Hitwise)
• Top news brands lead web with NY Times, People Magazine, USA Today and Washington Post leading the way, respectively (source Experian Hitwise)

Spending and Channels:

• Web, Email lead day-to-day business operations, with new media superseding old (source Multichannel Merchant)
• 67% say Email more important to their business or an 11% increase over last year (source Multichannel Merchant)
• Practical Email tools are on the rise for email marketing, with 9 of 10 sending promo messages, 7 in 10 transactional emails and plan to increase use (source Multichannel Merchant)
• 54% increase inbound budget for lead generation which is more cost effective than outbound lead gen (source HubSpot)
• Paid search is costly according to 29% of respondents (source Hubspot)
• Blogs are tops at lower cost leads with an average budge spent on company blogs and social media up 9% in 2009 to 17% in 2011 (source Hubspot)
• 20 cents separate Google and YaBing CPC with Google being the more cost effective (source Marin Software / Razorfish)
• 16 million more visitors at Google Ad Networks, second Yahoo! Network Plus (source comScore)
• Google tops Facebook by 40% in users with men 12.5% more likely than women to visit Google in any week (source gallup / USA Today)
• 65% see pros of Social Media and a similar number receive a positive benefit from using it (source Harris Interactive)
• 43% encounter Social Media cons, saying they have been offended by posts, comments or pictures they’ve seen (source Harris Interactive)
• Ad recall higher for Facebook than standard homepage ad (source Experian Hitwise)
• Global web users average 5.5 hours monthly for social networking sites (source Experian Hitwise)
• 9 in 10 youth online 1+ hours per day with the highest average being in the 18-to-24-year-old age group (source HubSpot)

With a stronger economy and more and more users finding their news and information, products and resources online, expect ad revenues to continue their trend upward. We believe the most significant growth will be in Social Media. But it’s all good news for both online advertising, social media marketing and consumers.