New numbers out on Internet ad revenue show an estimated 34% jump last year to a record $16.8 billion. These figures are pretty powerful, and they explain a lot of what's been going on in the media recently.

The study was conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. They had this to say about the big year:

"The continued growth in Interactive advertising is clearly based on marketers' recognition that they connect with consumers most effectively through Interactive media," said IAB CEO and President, Randall Rothenberg. "The increase underscores marketers' understanding that Interactive advertising can engage consumers, build brands and sell products and services," he continued.

On June 19, I posted about a new research report showing that the press release had become the No. 1 information source for knowledge workers, surpassing trade journals.

There's more to say on the subject.

My Talking Communications with Farrell Kramer podcast explores this issue in greater detail in an interview with Roger Strouse, Vice President and Lead Analyst for Outsell, the research firm that conducted the research. You can listen by clicking on Episode 8 -- The Rise of the Press Release.

Podcasting is clearly catching on.

A new report from Nielsen/NetRatings finds that 6.6% of all U.S. adults online have recently downloaded an audio podcast. This equates to 9.2 million podcast listeners.

For comparison, this figure surpasses those who publish blogs (4.8% of the U.S. adult online population) and online daters (3.9%).

Further, 4.0% -- or 5.6 million Web users -- were found to have recently downloaded a video podcast.

"We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media players proliferate," Michael Lanz, an analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings, said in a news release announcing the findings.

As a distribution mechanism, it's been my belief that the press release has made serious gains in recent years.

Now, a report from the research firm Outsell, cited in InformationWeek, confirms this.  The trade magazine reported the following:

"The real headliner in this is that the most used content type among knowledge workers for business purposes has switched to press releases," says Outsell VP and analyst Roger Strouse. Until recently, he says, trade journals had occupied the top spot.

The Outsell report is based on surveys of 7,000 knowledge workers taken from 2004 to the present, InformationWeek reported.  It continued:

We all know that some of the newer forms of communication -- RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts -- have generated a great deal of buzz.  The question is, where are they going?

Will they grow to become a permanent piece of the marketing/PR mix, or will they fade away after the initial enthusiasm is gone?

In a post today, Church of the Customer Blog cites an AdAge report that describes expected marketing spend on various forms of new media.  It shows they are getting serious attention from marketers -- in the form of actual budget!