The $5.4 billion spent on Internet ads during the three months ending in June compared with $5.7 billion at the same time last year, according to data released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It marked the second consecutive quarterly decline in Internet advertising, the first time that has happened since the aftermath of the dot-com bust at the beginning of the decade. The fallout from that implosion resulted in eight consecutive quarters of falling online ad sales.

For the first half of this year, Internet advertising totaled $10.9 billion, also down 5 percent from the same period of 2008. Nearly half that money has been spent on search advertising, helping to further enrich Google Inc., which controls nearly two-thirds of the U.S. search market.

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