The latest quarterly figures just released by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers show further growth in the Australian Internet advertising market, which continues to run at a higher rate than any other media sector.

In the last quarter (April-June), spending on Internet advertising was up by 44% on the same period in 2006, reaching just over $325 million. Search advertising continues to take the majority share of this spend, with over $145m (45%) spent in the period and a 77% increase over the previous year. However, these figures don't represent as high a growth rate year-on-year as the previous quarterly period, which could indicate an early sign of the rapid increases of previous years now starting to slow.

This is the second quarterly report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers since they took over the contract for tracking the spending trends on behalf of the IAB. The Search and Directories spend sector continues to be an estimated figure due to Google not releasing their figures, which could account for over 80% of this market.