CPMa CEO Rob Leathern authored a piece on InternetEvolution.com this week that looks at the relative value of user attention online compared to television:

That means that each user hour spent on search engines is worth about $3.24 in ad revenue, and therefore non-search online ad revenue clocks in at just $0.21 per hour. A lot of search spend is incremental, whereas non-search spend is more likely to reflect share shift from other media, and this seems to be borne out by these numbers as well, since this virtually puts non-search online advertising (display, lead generation, classifieds, video) at parity with offline television ad spend.

Very interesting figures – online display advertising is not that much different from the amount of revenue it generates per user hour compared to television, when in fact it should be a lot higher….