• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 4, 2008

The U.K. next year will become the first major economy in which the Internet overtakes television as the No. 1 advertising medium, according to a new forecast from WPP's GroupM unit. The new prediction follows a report released last month by GroupM, the world's largest buyer of media, which estimated that the Internet would become the dominant ad medium in Sweden during 2008, and that the U.K and Denmark were "likely to be the next in line."

GroupM now forecasts that the U.K. will likely pass that mark by the end of 2008 when the Internet will account for 24.8% of British ad spending, just behind a projected 26.0% hare for television.

The forecast assumes Internet ad spending in the U.K. will grow 30.8% during 2008 to $6.7 billion vs. a 1.0% rate of growth for television, which will climb to about $7.0 billion. The GroupM analysis assumes online ad spending would need to climb 6% or more during 2009 to overtake the market's television advertising volume.

Last month, GroupM issued a report predicting that the Internet would reach a double-digit share of worldwide ad spending for the first time in 2008. The report estimated that search would comprise between 65% and 70% of measured online ad spending in 2008, up from 50% in 2005.