NEW YORK -- Online advertisers spent $227 million in the third quarter, a jump of more than 200 percent from last year, according to a new survey from the Internet Advertising Bureau.

That represented a small increase from the second quarter, when revenues totaled $214 million. But the year-to-date figure -- $571 million -- has already surpassed the 1996 total.

IAB officials said respondents to the survey were optimistic about next year. "It appears that this media is beginning to behave in the same way as traditional media, with the same sort of seasonality affects. But people are bullish about next quarter, and about next year," said Tom Hyland, chairman of the New Media Group at Coopers & Lybrand LLP.

In fact, the survey indicated that about 70 percent of all remaining online inventory for the year had been sold by the middle of November.

Hyland said he wouldn't predict where the year would end up, but added that the industry was on track to hit projections by analysts.

The IAB surveys around 200 web sites, which in total account for about 90 percent of all web advertising revenue. According to the survey, the biggest advertisers on the Internet were consumer related products, which accounted for 32 percent of the market. That category was followed by computer products, at 22 percent and financial services, which accounted for 19 percent of revenues.

The consumer advertising was mostly made up of ads for retail stores and catalog or mail order companies, which together accounted for 62 percent of that segment.

The most popular sites for advertising were the search engines, which grabbed 55 percent of all ad revenue.