By Ciara Cole, Account Coordinator

As the popularity of online advertising grows and revenues continue to soar, 90octane predicts an exciting year for those watching ad spend.

Just this past year, the internet (including mobile) surpassed newspapers in ad revenue, making them the number two ad medium behind television, according to Advertising Age. Over the next year, we expect this trend to continue as online ad spending grows and rebounds further from a low point in 2009 attributed to the recession. Jack Marshall of Click Z, using predictions by Zenith, reports that online ad spend worldwide will increase 14% year-to-year, and will be as high as $70.5 billion in 2011—or 15.2% of overall ad spending. And, apparently, that is a conservative estimate. GroupM foresees a 37% growth in ad spend thanks to digital spend, and predicts it to rake in $82 billion in revenue.

As internet advertising continues to provide new and innovative approaches to their online promotions, products and services, online marketers are recognizing new and exciting opportunities. The expanding presence of businesses in social networking spaces, such as Facebook and Twitter, have created a more interactive platform for advertising, allowing consumers to communicate more directly with businesses than ever before. As a result, companies are investing much more heavily in their online and social media marketing arenas. As the Atlanta Businesss Chronicle notes, it isn’t a question of “if” a company should pursue a social advertising initiative, but rather how extensive it should be and how quickly the business should enact its strategy.

Posted by: Ciara Cole, Account Coordinator

While 2010 gave online marketers a slew of new tools and services like Apple’s iAd, Google’s AdMob, marketing platforms for mobile phones and new analytics metrics for Twitter and Facebook, there were some casualties along the way.

One notable “death” was the Yahoo Marketing Solutions paid search interface. While Yahoo’s search engine remains in place, search results and pay-per-click (PPC) programs are now being powered by Microsoft’s Bing through MSN adCenter – much to the rejoice of search marketers the world over.

This year we also said goodbye to Ask.com’s search engine. It wasn’t able to compete with the likes of Google and seemed to be facing an identity crisis, as Advertising Age put it, “as a search provider, a technical solution, an algorithmic brand and a loveable cartoon character icon.” However, on the bright side, Ask.com has returned to its roots as an online question-and-answer service.

Google Wave hung on by a thread in 2010. According to Mashable, Google’s real-time communication tool managed to come back from its near-death status (the project was slated to end at the conclusion of 2010) despite falling flat during its two-year run. Google Wave was recently picked up by the Apache Software Foundation. Thus, Wave will live to see another day.

The decline of these programs over the last year seems to point to strong competition in many sectors of online marketing, especially search engines. Google has been snapping up partners in areas ranging from photo editing to social gaming to online video, making it difficult for smaller firms to compete against the giant, but possibly making it more convenient for online marketers. Only 2011 will tell.