Signs of overall global recovery is evident from online advertising sign as advertising industry witnessed growth of 15 percent in first quarter of 2010 as the combined advertising revenues for four largest players ( Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL) amounted to nearly $ 8.8 billion. If compared to previous year it stood around 10 percent annual growth in first quarter previous year and succeeded by negative growth for the first two quarters of previous years as termed to be the Great Advertising Recession of 2009. Overall growth would have been much better if AOL had not faced rough quarter. It was the only one of the four companies to show a decline in advertising revenues, down 19 percent. Google’s ad revenue was up 21.5 percent, Microsoft’s was up 8.8 percent, and Yahoo’s was up 3 percent. Due to AOL’s poor results, the total $8.8 billion was temporarily down by 2.6 percent from the fourth quarter’s $9 billion. However, this appears to be a good proxy for overall advertising revenues and market.

Ad revenues chart