According to a report delivered by iResearch Consulting Group, a market researcher that specializes in Web-related studies, the Chinese online advertisement value in 2009 soared 21.2 percent year on year to reach 20.61 billion yuan ($3 billion).

iResearch expects online ad revenues to surpass 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) in 2010, spurred by the World Expo 2010 Shanghai and the World Cup in South Africa this year.

But market shares of traditional Web portals are loosing ground to emerging media, like video, online social networks and search engine websites.

The biggest drivers of the online ad revenue boom have been search engines, whose ad revenues secured a 38.2-percent growth in 2009 year on year, reaching 6.95 billion yuan ($1.02 billion). Baidu.com ranked first with 21.3 percent of all website-generated revenues, while Google.com had secured 11.1 percent by the end of 2009. Google is expected to rank second in terms of market share.

iResearch predicted new media will be a major propellant of 2010 online ad revenue growth.