eMarketer has some audience measurement of blogs until 2012

An interesting statistics study from eMarketer I found last May (2008) on eMarketer.  It documents how much the readership has grown in the US for blogs and they trend for the next 4 years.

What I think is interesting is how much of all US Internet users will be reading blogs as of this year - 54%; amazing truely.

The number of people creating blogs in the US will also grow, reaching 34.7 million people by 2012—16% of the Internet population. By contrast, there were some 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007, a number that correlates to 12% of Internet users.

Buoyed by these massive levels of consumer engagement, US blog advertising will reach $746 million in 2012, up from $283 million in 2007.

Source: eMarketer

It should be interesting to see just how accurate their projections are and if this impacts the number and amount bloggers get paid.  Gawker pays per visitor so perhaps their authors will benefit.