The Internet still has some way to go to replace television as the main form of entertainment, particularly when it comes to shared experiences. But in one country advertisers clearly believe it’s now the most effective media for marketing.

Newly released figures for the first half of this year show that advertisers in the United Kingdom spent £1.75 billion ($2.8 billion) on online advertising. That represented 23.5 percent of the total spend, ahead of the 21.9 percent spent on TV advertising.

According to Guy Phillipson, head of the Internet Advertising Bureau which put together the figures, this makes the U.K. “the first major market where online has overtaken television to become the biggest single medium.”

The money spent on Internet advertising breaks down to 59.8 percent on search-related ads, 22 percent on classified ads and 18.1 percent on display ads. The continued growth of search ads appears to be partially down to the current recession, the logic being that advertisers are taking less risk with such ads because they will usually be seen by somebody with an active interest in the relevant subject.

Among the other reasons given for the overall rise in Internet ad spending are the increase in options such as video ads (and the rise in the proportion of users with fast enough connections to watch them). Advertisers are also attracted to the way it much easier to accurately track the response to, and effectiveness of, an online ad as opposed to one in a newspaper or on TV.

The U.K. Internet ad spending is more than 90 times the equivalent figure from the first time the IAB measured Internet advertising back in 1998.

The switch from TV to online is having a major effect on Britain’s commercial TV stations where revenue is falling so fast that there are some calls for them to receive some of the public money which funds the non-commercial BBC channels.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am under Advertising.

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