Archive

Recently Thomas Cole reported on a study by US marketing research company comScore on how internet marketing in the US had experienced a major growth over the past few months.

Now in another report released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising spending in the United Kingdom has overtaken television marketing expenditure for the first time.

The report states that UK advertisers spent £1.75 billion on internet advertising in the first half of 2009, this represents a 4.6% increase year-on-year – compared to the £1.6 billion spent on television advertising.

The Guardian reports that television advertising has been the UK’s marketing medium of choice for almost 50 years – but with more and more people spending more time online than watching television, it has taken less than a decade for the internet market to overtake television as the leading advertising sector. When the IAB first recorded online advertising spends in the UK in 1998, the figure was only £19.4 million.

One of the many increasing areas contributing to the major surge in growth is the online video advertising sector, which in that past year has grown by around 300% to almost £12 million spend.

The UK television marketing body Thinkbox has released a statement, contesting the IAB’s findings, stating that it is inaccurate to count the rapidly expanding internet as a single marketing medium. It is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it” states Thinkbox marketing director Lindsey Clay. "Online marketing spend is made up of many things, including email, classified ads, display ads (including online TV advertising) and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually."

This new information may encourage companies to shift their marketing budget from traditional methods such as newspapers and television to advertising on the internet, using pay per click campaigns, online video or other media.

For more information on how to improve your business' online visibility, or on how you can take out an online marketing campaign, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

You can drop us a message via the Contact Us Page or call the Thomas Cole Techteam on 01254 832815.