Internet advertising revenues grew 30 percent, earning $12.5 billion in 2005, according to numbers released today by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That growth and shifts within the sector reflect how advertisers are rethinking their approach to marketing.

Leaping gains in Referrals/Lead Generation and E-mail ads combined with yet more spending on keyword advertising particularly drove revenues higher.

Keyword search advertising alone brought in $5.132 billion in 2005, helping to explain Google's strong first quarter results.

Google's keyword product AdSense is its primary revenue stream, and yesterday the company soundly beat Wall Street estimates.

Display advertising also saw an overall revenue increase in 2005 from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion.

But the method nevertheless lost market share, slipping from 20 percent to 19 percent of all Internet ad revenue. The subtle move perhaps presages a much-predicted shift in the industry toward interactive and viral marketing.

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