It seems that the internet is making good progress in its journey to surpass TV ad spending:

U.S. INTERNET AD SPENDING WILL surpass $10 billion for the first time this year, projects online industry market research aggregator eMarketer in a new report released late Wednesday. The report, which is derived from leading industry data tracking and forecasts, and is benchmarked against the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Internet advertising tracking report, predicts advertisers will spend $12.9 billion on Internet advertising in 2005, up from $9.6 billion in 2004, and more than double the $6 billion marketers spent online just three years ago in 2002.

Now before we get too excited we should point out that there is still a long way to go before this is anywhere near the amount of money expended on TV advertising but doubling in less that three years is pretty good.