Internet advertising in the U.S. will continue to grow fast even with the current economic conditions that will lead to a contraction in ad spending over all, according to IDC.

Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as other advertising. Over all Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.

The Internet will go from the number 5 medium to the number 2 medium in just five years, making it bigger than newspapers, cable TV, broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing.  Video advertising will attract the most marketing dollars over the next five years. Its revenue will grow from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.4 percent.

“The size of the online video audience as well as the time it spends watching video is sure to increase as broadband access penetration increases, connections become faster, and as more premium content is available,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment.

“What will also drive this trend is that consumers are starting to realize that, as opposed to TV, Internet video lets them watch what they want, when they want, and increasingly also where they want.”

Search advertising will remain the one advertising format that will receive the most revenue over the forecast period in the U.S. This means that for any media company search must be a key part of its strategy.

AOL had its seventh consecutive month of growth in April in both unique visitors and page views, according to comScore Media Metrix.

AOL’s sites grew unique visitors 12 percent year over year to 55.4 million; page views increased 48 ” year over year to 4.3 billion in April.

The company continues to launch and redesign many of its sites. This week, AOL launched a number of vertical sites within its network, including ParentDish, The BoomBox and TheBoot, along with the new AOL Money & Finance video site.

The significant growth in reach and engagement proves that the work we’ve done rebuilding our vertical websites and introducing new sites is paying off as evidenced by our growing online audience,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming.

“Our focus is on delivering consumers content based on their passion points, which creates better experiences for consumers and helps advertisers target key audiences and increase revenue potential.”

eMarketer has revised its estimates for U.S. social network ad spending, now projecting advertisers will spend $1.4 billion to place ads on social networks this year, down from its original estimate of $1.6 billion.

According to eMarketer part of the reason for the revised estimates is due to the slowing economy, specifically for those companies who will cut experimental ad dollars first.

Another factor is, “social network sites are still trying to figure out what sort of advertising works,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst, who authors the social networking reports.

“Tapping into consumers’ conversations and spreading brand awareness virally has proven more challenging than companies originally thought.”

eMarketer has revised its forecast for the two largest social networks, MySpace and Facebook. Its original prediction said MySpace would bring in $850 million in the U.S. but that estimate has been scaled back 11.2 percent to $755 million.

At Facebook, advertisers will spend $265 million, a 12.9 percent drop from the previous forecast of $305 million.

Close to one out of five U.S. Internet users will go online to buy gifts for Mother’s Day according to a survey by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation called “2008 Mother’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey.”

“Consumers will be very cautious with their wallets this Mother’s Day, heeding mom’s advice that she really doesn’t need much,” said BIGresearch Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist. “Gas prices and other economic issues will still be at the forefront of people’s minds as they shop around for the perfect gift for mom.”

Those surveyed said they planned to spend an average of $138.63 for Mother’s Day this, down slightly from $139.14 last year. The NRF said it expected total consumer spending for the holiday to reach $15.8 billion.

A small portion of U.S. adults will be going online for more than just shopping. Five percent said they planned to contact their mom online on Mother’s Day.

Nielsen has launched a new reporting service that focuses on audience measurement of online and mobile called TotalWeb.

TotalWeb shows the unduplicated, unique audience for 200 major Web sites across the PC and mobile space, which will be useful as the two converge.  Nielsen says that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the total size of their audience.

“The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile.

“Publishers can now monetize their total cross-platform audience, and advertisers will better understand the efficiency and incremental value of mobile Web traffic.”

TotalWeb’s first report found that for many sites, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience by 13 percent over PC alone.

According to Nielsen, 87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services, and more than one in ten mobile subscribers (13.7 percent) actively uses mobile Internet each month.