There has been much talk among stock traders and tech people as to what the near term future holds for Google. Some have been suggesting that AdWords revenue is flattening out.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a report last week suggesting the the Internet ad pie is still growing. Revenue from online ads for the entire industry topped $21 billion in 2007, a 26% increase from the year before.

There was not any huge shifts in the type of online advertising that is making the money with the exception of online video and rich media. Last year, rich media and digital video constituted a 7% market share. This year, the online video has increased to the point that it has been broken out from the rich media. Together, this year, they constitute 10% of the market share. Good news for online advertisers who use video and other rich media to get their message out.

One other point brought out in their research is that the pricing models are swinging to performance deals (CPC, CPA, etc.) and away from CPM or impression marketing. Not really surprising. People always want to know that they are getting what they pay for.

I need to send a big Thank You to Cheryl Contee for letting me know about some market research that comScope did almost a year ago.

Their research was to determine who in Europe is on the Internet and what are their top sites. I have to admit that I was really surprised by two of their findings. The first is that only about 11% of the population in Russia is on the Internet. Maybe part of the issue for Russia are the web sites that are available. The top three sites for most countries are things like Google or Yahoo. For Russia, I have never heard of their top sites. The second big surprise for me was how popular Microsoft’s MSN is in Europe, especially given how hard the EU has been on Microsoft for its monopoly. Wierd.

comScope also looked at the popularity of social networks, both at the total number of users and the popularity of each major social network across various regions. What is most amazing is looking at the change in the total number of users over time. Facebook recently surpassed MySpace in number of users. The growth of social networks is just super exponential.