How Agencies are Spending Online Media Budgets (via @Mashable)

Before the Internet, media agencies planned clients’ campaigns with a fairly straightforward menu of TV, radio, print and outdoor advertising options.

These days, TV buys still take the largest piece of the global spend, but the share of money going to Internet advertising is rising steeply, and the options for those dollars are multiplying and morphing just as quickly. TwitterYouTubeand Hulu each offer their own menu of customized advertising options, and Facebook ranked as one of the Top 10 online advertising properties earlier this year. And since online ad spending is not yet keeping pace with Americans’ time spent on the Internet, the upward trend in spending still has plenty of room to grow.

Of the money going to online buys, nearly half goes to search and a quarter goes to display. But even within these categories, online ads are becoming more social, and spending on lead generation and email marketingis shrinking. At least a quarter of social media users connect with businesses along with their friends, and the most valuable campaigns lead to an alchemy of the traditional and the social. This past year, several big-budget Super Bowl ads lived on as viral YouTube hits, gaining popularity and millions of views that money still can’t buy.

Check out the infographic below for more details on how agencies are allocating online media budgets.