• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, October 14, 2009

It's been happening for a while, but Internet ad spending has surpassed TV advertising. OK, it's in the UK, but it still marks a major moment for the "World" Wide Web, and has clear implications for the U.S. market. UK advertisers spent about $2.8 billion online in the first six months of the year, a 4.6 percent year-on-year increase, according to the report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured Internet advertising, just over $31 million was spent online. All told, it took the Internet little more than a decade to become the biggest advertising sector in the UK, now accounting for 23.5 percent of all ad money, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9 percent. TV advertising fell about 17 percent year-on-year in the first half, to just over $2.5 billion, according to the report.

Stateside, we've got a ways to go. Next year, digital ad spending is still only expected to account for 17 percent of total U.S. ad spending, according to a new report from GroupM. That's up from 15.4 percent this year and 13.9 percent in 2008. Still, WPP Group's investment arm predicts 4 percent growth in US online ad spending this year, which amounts to $22.77 billion.

But, "Nobody seems to have recognized that in the UK the BBC [which is ad-free] accounts for a massive share of TV viewing," cautions comScore chairman and cofounder Gian Fulgoni. "It's got to be a 30-40 percent share, so you have to be careful when drawing comparisons between the two markets."

The rise in worldwide spending to $58.17 billion this year will mean online takes 13.2 percent of total ad dollars. GroupM predicts that share will increase to 14.6 percent in 2010.

Guy Phillipson, the chief executive of the IAB, reckoned that there is still significant growth potential left in the Internet ad market, saying: "We could absolutely see it grow to being a 30 percent medium [of share of ad spend], to go past ($6.4 billion) to even ($8 billion) annually ... Online display advertising has plenty of room for growth."