M&A volume in the interactive marketing services areas received a boost earlier this month, when Hearst paid $325 million for search marketer iCrossing, which was one of the 10 deals arranged by JEGI since January.

A look at the levels of individual business show some interesting patterns, confirming the relative low cost deals in the B2B segment and the strength of mobile and analytics. Deals in all categories of B2B (general, online, media) were all up nearly 4 times as much as last year, while business-to-consumer acquisitions grew 64 percent. Analytics, otherwise identified as Database & Information Services, saw volume jump 90 percent, and Marketing & Interactive, which included the Hearst/iCrossing deal, shot up 96 percent. As impressive as those last two were, Mobile Media & Technology deals rose by a whopping 188 percent, JEGI said.

While Hearst’s purchase of iCrossing was a huge deal—Yahoo’s $90 million acquisition of Associated Content was another—they were certainly not the norm. On average, deal sizes for the interactive markets remained relatively small, coming in around $23 million compared to $47 million for the overall media marketplace.

Despite the uncertainty in the economy, it doesn’t appear that deals will be slowing down in the second half. Volume will almost certainly hold steady, and it might even rise further. Private equity firms are particularly likely to push through more deals. 

Of the 211 transactions tracked by JEGI in Q2, 45 were led by PE firms or PE‐backed companies. The pace was fairly modest after the M&A frenzy of 2007, but coming off tough years like the last two, 2010 is looking practically robust. More from JEGI in this Release (PDF).

In Petsky Prunier’s tally, Marketing Technology was the most active segment in 2Q10, with 69 deals valued at $2.6 billion in all. IBM’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Sterling Commerce from AT&T (NYSE: T) was the largest deal in this area, with Online Targeting/Optimization being the most active sub-segment with 12 deals, including four acquisitions and eight investments worth $167 million. Some of the notable deals in that category were Google’s acquisition of Invite Media for $70 million, GSI Commerce’s acquisition of FetchBack, MyBuys’ acquisition of Veruta, Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Investments’ $8 million investment in Simulmedia and Bessemer Venture Partners’ $7 million investment in Criteo.