The internet saw the biggest growth in advertising spending among all channels during the first three months of 2012, according to a new Nielsen study.

Spending on online advertising went up 12.1 percent over the first three months of 2011 worldwide. All other forms of advertising spending increased 3.1 percent over that same period, according to the study.

This percentage increase in internet ad spending corresponds with an overall rise in internet video views. A recent comScore study cited by Marketing Forecast found that the average video viewer watches 204 videos a month, a 20 percent increase over last year.

In addition, the average online video viewer new spends more than 21 hours a month watching videos via the internet. This average hourly amount is up about 22 percent from 2011.

YouTube, according to comScore, remains the most popular website for online videos. After YouTube, the top video traffic sites are Yahoo, Vevo and Facebook.

While online advertising spending is growing by the largest percentage amount, television continued to attract the largest total amount of ad dollars, according to the Nielsen study. TV ad spending went up 2.8 percent during the first quarter of 2012 over the previous year.