Online advertising continues to set new records, this time in the United States where the digital spend for the first half of 2010 exceeded $12.1 billion, reports the Internet Advertising Bureau. We reported earlier this month that in the UK spending on social media helped propel the total online ad spend. In the US, it was a different catalyst: online video.

Here’s some inspiring news for low-budget filmmakers and cash-strapped brands looking to get noticed. A new effectiveness study of online video shows that user-generated videos are in many ways as effective as slickly produced TV commercials, news that would hardly surprise your typical YouTube addict. Could this spell the end of the expensive commercial shoot?

The new online ad spend figures are out from IAB UK this morning revealing a recession-busting 10 percent year-on-year rise. More impressively, the online ad spend is nearly one-quarter of the total UK advertising market. Yep, £1 out of every £4 spent on advertising in the UK is now spent online with only one direction to go: UP.

Facebook has soared past Yahoo as the Number 2 place to watch online videos. More great news for the dominant social network? Well, maybe not: people still spend more time watching videos on Yahoo, and there are nagging doubts about how Facebook can actually make money from video content.

Companies plan to invest more in social media next year, a new Econsultancy survey shows. That’s the promising bit. The less inspiring part? Not all of these companies actually know how they are going to track this investment. This comes even as a new report shows how one aspect of social media spend – a Facebook strategy – really does have a pay-off.

No doubt helped by the World Cup and the explosion in smartphone usage, mobile video consumption is booming in much of Europe with the UK and Italy leading the way, new comScore research shows. Roughly two-thirds of all smartphone users use the handset to view video, the data show, either via a mobile TV subscription or by accessing video-sharing sites (or, their apps) such as YouTube.

The global social media landscape continues to shift in surprising ways. Two new Forrester reports show – as expected – a continuing rise in social media usage, but there is no substantial growth in social media-inspired content-creation. Meanwhile, we note another significant (though hardly surprising) development, as Twitter overtakes MySpace in unique visitors.

With a potential market of 108 million online shoppers, China is an e-commerce force to be reckoned with. With an extremely young, social media-savvy net population, it’s become a social commerce force as well.

It’s no surprise that increasing numbers of retailers are establishing a presence in social media. The surprise lies in their reasons for going social – most say they were pushed into it by customers and rivals.

It’s no surprise that Asia is one of the biggest growth markets in social networking. So you might think that’s where Facebook is gaining its new ground, right? Well, actually no. In much of Asia, and some other parts of the world, Facebook is trailing badly in the social network stakes.