• Reuters, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 10:45 AM

Incredibly, Internet ad spending is on pace to overtake television as the biggest advertising medium in the UK by the end of next year, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre. The report said that spending last year grew 38 percent to $5.6 billion, thanks to the introduction of cheap laptops, an increase in television content online and an overall increase in Web penetration.

"With broadband speeds on the up and consumers spending more time on more sites, the outlook for online advertising is rosy--in fact, we expect it to overtake TV in 2009 when it will become the UK's biggest medium," IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson said in a statement. TV spending in the UK was $8.02 billion last year, followed by print advertising, which was $7.33 billion. To surpass TV next year, online spending would have to grow by more than 40 percent. Meanwhile, it was a strong year for all sectors of the UK online ad market. Display grew 31 percent, search--which represents more than half of all online spending in the UK--grew 39 percent, and classified spending shot up 54 percent.

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