• The Washington Post , Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:46 AM

Procter & Gamble, which spends nearly $5 billion a year on advertising, devoted less than 2% of its measured ad spending online, according to figures from Advertising Age. The University of Phoenix and its parent company, Apollo Group, by contrast, spent $278 million on ads last year. Most of it was on the Web, where it ranks as the No. 1 spender.

The dichotomy highlights what for many online media businesses is a grim economic reality: The biggest U.S. advertisers have not fully embraced the Web. In part, many observers say, the advertising industry and its workforce are more accustomed to creating and presenting 15-second television spots or magazine ads than they are to arranging an online campaign.

In part, too, the reluctance of big brands to move online is because they have more to lose. Web veteran Rob Wrubel, who manages ad spending for the University of Phoenix, says he thinks that the big advertisers will soon make the transition online. "We are now going to see large advertisers do what they did with television in the '50s -- to get behind programming," he says.

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