Online advert spending overtakes TV

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

It is thought the UK is the world's first major economy to pass the media milestone.

Internet spending grew by 4.6% during the period compared to the previous year and now makes up 23.5% of the market. TV advertising fell by 17%, making up 21.9% of total spend.

The study, carried out by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed overall advertising fell by 16% in the period as firms slashed costs in the recession.

IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson said he thought online advertising still had room for growth.

"We could see absolutely see it grow to being a 30% medium (of ad share spend), to go past £4bn to even £5bn annually," he added.

Online advertising is classified as email campaigns, classified adverts, display ads and search engine websites such as Google.

The IAB data showed that 60% of the online advertising was spent on search engines, with 22% on online classified ads.

Press display advertising was the UK's third biggest ad market, with £1.38 billion of spend, or 18.5% of the total.

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