Online ad spending overtakes television for first time

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 30 Sep 2009 at 10:05

The UK has become the first country where advertisers spend more online than they do on television advertising, according to a new report.

The study conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed that in the first six months of 2009, advertisers spent a record £1.75 billion online.

That's a 4.6% increase on last year, and means that 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK is spent online. Television advertising accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.

Despite this success, the IAB claims there's still room for further growth. "We could see it grow to being a 30% medium, to go past £4 billion to even £5 billion annually," says IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson.

The figure's are even more impressive when you consider than in 1998 - the first year the IAB recorded internet advertising figures - just £19.4 million was spent online.

We could see it grow to being a 30% medium, to go past £4 billion to even £5 billion annually

According to the IAB, the recession pushed advertisers from television to online, with the big beneficiaries being the search websites such as Google, which took 60% of the online budget.

However, spending on online display ads - an area Google's making a lot of noise about - fell by 5.2% to £316.5 million from last year. This represents an 18% share of all internet spending.

The one surprise was the online video market which encapsulates services such as iPlayer and 4oD. Advertising spending in this area shot up 300% to nearly £12 million.

However, the figures were not without their detractors.

"Online marketing spend is made up of many things including email, classified ads, display ads and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually," argues Lindsey Clay, marketing director of analysis firm ThinkBox.

"The internet is a fantastic technology and home to many different marketing activities that do different things. As such, it is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it."