According to a new study conducted by WebVisible which is an Irvine-based online marketing firm, 159% or more was spent by small businesses on Internet advertising in the second quarter when compared to the same time last year.

According to figures from WebVisible quarterly report, $2,231 was spent by average small business advertisers. They spent on search advertising in Q2 2010 which was up by 1.4 percent from Q1 2010 and by 159% over Q2 2009. This is continuing, year-over-year gains are seen in the last several quarters. Year-over-year expenditure increased by 91% in Q1 2010 and 111% in Q4 2009.

From Q1 to Q2 2010 report shows that businesses offering loan, jewelry, job recruitment services and mortgages increased spending significantly.
It was reported that businesses gained 58% in the percentage of search clicks which resulted in a phone call when compared with the second quarter of 2009. There was an increase of 29% from the first quarter.

On Yahoo, Cost Per Click (CPC) increased by 23% and there was about 9.8% increase on Bing. There was increase of just 2.2% on Google with a quarter-over-quarter showed the most stable CPCs.