Digital advertising revenue hit a record $59.6 billion in the United States in 2015, according to the new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The number was up a full 20 percent versus the $49.5 billion in revenue in 2014.

Within the numbers mobile advertising continues to soar, growing to $20.7 billion for the calendar year 2015, up a full 66 percent year-on-year.

Non-mobile digital video, despite still making up a small percentage of overall revenue, continues to grow, bringing in $4.2 billion in 2015, up 30 percent versus 2014.

Social media, led naturally by the behemoth that is Facebook, brought in $10.9 billion in 2015, up 55 percent year-on-year, while display-related advertising delivered $13.9 billion, up only 3 percent over 2014.

Search came in at $20.5 billion for the year, an 8 percent increase over the year before.

Retail advertisers are said to continue to represent the largest category of internet ad spending, responsible for 22 percent of the total ad spend in 2015, followed by automotive and financial services which each came in at 13 percent each.

“Mobile’s impressive upswing is a testament to its increasing importance to marketers,” IAB President and Chief Executive Officer Randall Rothenberg said in a statement. “Digital video is also seeing strong growth, and we anticipate brands and media buyers will drive further excitement about the future of the medium at the upcoming Digital Content NewFronts.”

Rising CPM’s

Of particular interest in the full report is the bucking of the trend of downwards CPM rates, with IAB claiming that the growth in advertising has also seen an increase in the rate paid per one thousand views.

From AdAge:

More generally, what has surprised [IAB] the most about numbers they’ve recently seen was that cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad rates continued to rise, in aggregate, despite the growing popularity of programmatic advertising.

“Programmatic is clearly not impacting pricing in any downward fashion … If anything, it’s boosting.”

The other takeaway is that the growth is no longer coming from tradition advertising businesses, search and display, and there will be shareholders in one company that will be concerned by these figures, and that’s those with shares in Alphabet, Inc., the company formerly known as Google.

Google may have a strong stake in mobile advertising through the global dominance of its Android operating system, but its legacy businesses are grinding to a halt in terms of growth, and with virtually no stake in social that is a serious worry.

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